Workers

This experience has been about the work of the harvest, so I want to say a little about the workers.  Perhaps one could accuse me of leaving them for last, but this is not so; they have been first and always in the pictures.  All of these images have been about them;  here I want to give their names and acknowledge what they do.

I could call them the "team", I could call them the "crew", the "harvesters" maybe, but what I saw them doing was work.  Hard work.  Constantly and with dignity.  From 8am to 6pm -- every day.  Through bright sunny mornings, glowing afternoons, and howling winds of our worst October weather, they were in the bogs gathering in the cranberries.

There are extraordinary smooth flows to their motions and I hope I have conveyed a little of that.  In the water, the bulk of waders, the resistance of the water, and the ripples every time someone takes a step, create forms that we do not see every day.  But in the dry harvest too, the careful pace at which the Furford pickers comb the berries out of the ground-hugging plants, the gentle burlap sacks in which the precious berries are first collected, and the need to tread carefully so as not to crush the plants mean that everyone is moving in the bogs in a careful, dignified way.

These pictures of the workers are not closeups, mostly.  I do not know these men well, and I have no wish to intrude on their privacy with my lens and convey an impression that I have captured their souls.  I am not trying to do that.  All I want to talk about is their work.  I think that their work and how they do it actually tells us much about who they are, but even more, it tells us about what is our connection to them.

Antonio

Edwin, Jayson

Pedro, Angel, Pete

Juan

Edgar

Jose

Hector

Raul