Harvest Pilgrims

Mexican and Caribbean Migrant Farm Workers in Canada

Harvest Pilgrims tells the story, through more than 80 photographs and texts by Pietropaolo, of the thousands of migrant farm workers who come to Canada every year to work our farms. Like migratory birds, most of the workers arrive in time for spring planting and return home after the harvest. But where is “home” for these workers who six months in the country of their birth and six months as a guest workers in Canada, year after year? Leaving behind homes and loved ones in Mexico, Jamaica, and the eastern Caribbean, they have become the mainstay of the traditional family farm as well as the larger agro-business farms in Canada.

Once again, Pietropaolo makes a hidden, almost invisible world that lies behind the food we eat, visible and ingrained in our conscience. His work adds a new dynamic to the discourse and culture of food, by putting to question the simplistic notion of the so-called 100-mile diet. 

Border Crossings magazine said: ‘Pietropaolo’s photographs have the intensity found in Jean Mohr’s and John Berger’s seminal book A Seventh Man.”

Foreword by Naomi Rosenblum, author of A World History of Photography.

Essay by Maia-Mari Sutnik, Curator of Photography, Art Gallery of Ontario.

Essay and texts by Vincenzo Pietropaolo.

Soft cover with flaps, duo tone, 130 pp, 10x10.5 in.

Publisher: Between the Lines, Toronto, 2009

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