About this blog

This blog is a continuation of my Div III (a fancy word for Senior Thesis), which I completed in May at Hampshire College. It focuses on tobacco farming in western MA, but hopefully will branch into the culture of cigar aficionados (cigar enthusiasts). Here is an exerpt I wrote about my project last year:

The year before I started my Div III I realized that I was most passionate about photography, particularly photographing people. When I look at things, I aim to understand them deeply. I position myself under the surface, trying to grasp hidden truths. This stems from a need to know the meaning behind things. My mind dissects and catalogues information about people. I constantly try to understand why people do things and what their actions say about them. In finding a project I knew I wanted to focus on a group of people whom I had not studied before. Going into the project, I felt that the less I knew, the less my educated bias would affect the project. Rather I wanted my study to occur naturally, to let the issues surface naturally. My photographs and writing should be organic, not posed or constructed by my own bias. This is what I hoped would happen.


When I started thinking about my Div III I remembered Brightwood Health Center. I first heard about the Brightwood Health Center from Mary Bombardier, who works at Community Partnership for Social Change office at Hampshire College. What drew me to Brightwood was the way Mary described it. She told me how the center works on health care justice issues, by serving underprivileged community members in Springfield, MA. Things that happened at the clinic happened in real life with real life problems, not in a theoretical academic mindset. Combining photography and medicine would bring together both areas of my studies. The possibilities at Brightwood seemed promising. I could represent a group of people both through a scientific and photographic lens. Perhaps I could become deeply involved in the clinic and could get to know some of the doctors and patients intimately.


During the summer I worked with Luz Pena on the outreach program. The outreach program runs from May to October/November. Every week Luz and a doctor (either Dr. K- or Dr. F-) go to two of the five tobacco farms in Southwick, MA to see the migrant Jamaican and Puerto Rican farmworkers. The patients at the outreach clinics make up less than 10% of the total patients at Brightwood. Brightwood mostly sees seasonal farmworkers, or farmworkers who live in the area all year, but only working on farms half of the year. The men I saw migrate from Jamaica or Puerto Rico for the harvesting season, returning home after the crop has been reaped. These men work on tobacco farms in Southwick, which is near the Connecticut border.

Based on my internship position and my ability to meet farmworkers, my photographic and ethnographic project transformed organically from a project about the health center to a project about the migrant Jamaican farmworkers who harvest and grow tobacco. Key political and economic issues arose from following the movement of these men and the goods they produce. The issues this study raised ended up forming the bulk of my project.