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Wesaam Al-Badry
Migrant WorkersWesaam Al-Badry drove over 1,500 miles between Salinas, Fresno, and Bakersfield, California to capture farmworkers' daily lives during COVID-19. From intimate home scenes to images of workers in the fields, Al-Badry provides an in-depth look into the lives of the people and families who help feed America.
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The Pickers
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Voices from America's "Salad Bowl"
In Al-Badry's new body of work, Migrant Workers, the artist offers a lens into the lives of essential migrant farm workers. His approach to this assignment, like all his projects, was to offer a true look at the people he would meet and learn their stories in an authentic and honest way. Al-Badry states, "The first thing that comes to my mind every time I’m photographing is what is my roll in all of this? Because I am not afraid to refuse a frame that presents itself in the perpetuation of stereotypes." To create this body of work he spent intimate time getting to know the people who harvest what is nick-named "America's Salad Bowl", the Salinas Valley.
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In the Field and at Home
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Farm workers are paid not hourly but by bag or bucket of produce picked. If a fruit falls and hits the ground, it can no longer be part of the harvest. Additionally, farm workers cannot take those falling fruits home to use. Many of the farm workers who labor the fields in California find it difficult to afford the very food they harvest. Adding on top of that, many farm workers live is areas none as 'food deserts" (an area that has limited access to affordable and nutritious food) and rely on food banks to help put food on their tables.
More on this story can be found in The New York Times article "Why The People Harvesting Californians Food Can't Afford It" found here featuring images captured by Wesaam Al-Badry.
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Journalism and Art intertwined.
"Art and journalism should not be competing forces: together they are a force for change." - Wesaam Al-BadryAl-Badry is a storyteller who approaches his sessions with no agenda. He builds relationships with the people he plans to photograph and his goals is to showcase them in a way that reveals their true story and shows them respect. He is avoids perpetuating a story he thinks (or someone else thinks) should be there. Al-Badry writes, “Journalism has an obligation to do the right thing, no matter what it is. Don’t sensationalize peoples’ struggles for your readers".
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Wesaam Al-Badry, 2020
Wesaam Al-Badry Bio
Wesaam Al-Badry is an investigative, multimedia journalist and interdisciplinary artist working mainly with themes related to identity, labor, migration, Islamophobia, war and technology. His work focuses on the Middle East and the North African diaspora, specifically the region's representation of popular culture in the media.
Al-Badry was born in Southern Iraq and relocated to the United States after living in a refugee camp for 4 and a half years. Bearing witness to the Iraq and Iran war, Gulf War, and the uprising in Iraq which have shaped the culture's perpetual paranoia.
Al-Badry has worked for global media outlets, including CNN and Al-Jazeera America. His photographs have been featured in The New York Times, Rolling Stone Magazine, The Atlantic, and Mother Jones. Al-Badry has received The John Collier Jr. Award for Still Photography, Dorothea Lange Fellowship, the Jim Marshall Fellowship for Photography, and The National Geographic Society Fellowship. His artwork has been exhibited internationally at select museums including the de Young Fine Arts Museum in San Francisco, the Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt, Germany, and the Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York City.
He currently resides in the Bay Area. Al-Badry received his master’s in journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, and his BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Al-Badry is represented by the Jenkins Johnson Gallery in San Francisco and New York.
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Available works
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Conversations on Culture
Photographer Wesaam Al-Badry in conversation with Karen Jenkins-Johnson
