Hartville migrantworkers spotlighted in book, photos

In Hartville, Ohio, a community of migrantworkers returns year after year to work a black-muck vegetable farm owned by the Zellers family. The photo exhibition, Growing Season: The Life of a Migrant Community, opens September 9, 2006 at the Canton Museum of Art, offers an intimate portrait of this largely Latino migrant community and a way of life that is rarely seen, or understood, by people outside this tightly knit circle.

The exhibition will present fifty images and the text of their related stories in the CMA galleries. The exhibition coincides with the September 2006 publishing of the 192-page book, Growing Season: The Life of a Migrant Community, by Kent State University Press. Photographer Gary Harwood and writer David Hassler have worked closely with the people of this community over several years to document the challenges and joys of their daily lives. The book as been selected by the Canton Mayor’s Literacy Commission for this fall’s “One Book – One Community” Program. The photo—Ancient Art—depicts one of the photos on display. More photos at: http://www.cantonart.org/pressroom/pressroom.html