Ken Light

A decade ago, Ken Light (born 1951) traveled across the United States photographing a country that he realized was the most fragile of organisms. The photographs of the earlier years in this book create the context for understanding how America lost its way. Light reached all four corners of the country to document people across race, class and political lines. We see the heartland and the coastal cities, Wall Street and rural small towns.

As he continued, seismic changes erupted across America and the country descended into an age of crisis. He photographed protests and Washington politicians in Congress and the White House, climate change disasters and environmental defenders, the rise of the regime of Donald Trump, the Trump rallies and America's reactions to it all. He comprehensively probed the fractured social and economic condition, going beyond the tropes of inequality we all recite by heart to create a visual portrait of a country mired in calamity, its people deeply splintered, angry and in pain.

The resulting portrait of the American social landscape is a riveting historical and visual record of a complicated country in a complicated time. It is compelling, and one of the earliest photographic accounts of an age that historians and citizens will be scrutinizing for generations to come.

Between 1983 and 1987 along the California/Mexico border, Ken Light took his Hasselblad camera and flash and rode along with US Border Patrol agents in the middle of the night as they combed the Otay Mesa looking for "illegal aliens.” He was there when they were apprehended - captured by authorities as well as the photographer's flash. The black and white images are stark, impromptu mug shots in the desert, taken at a moment of extreme vulnerability, when hope gave way to despair, migrants caught in a cruel game of hide and seek.

Light's photographs and José Ángel Navejas' first hand, compelling memoir, presented in both English and Spanish, offer testimony of the harrowing night border crossing of those desperately seeking a chance at a better life. A day after Navejas first crossed the US border from Mexico, he was caught and deported back onto the streets of Tijuana. Undeterred, he crawled back through a tunnel to San Diego, where he entered the United States forever.

In piercing words and in strobe-lit images caught against the dark of night, Midnight La Frontera's immediacy underscores the struggle and defiance of those who make the perilous hike for days and weeks in search of the American Dream.

“What’s Going On” is a collection of photographs taken from 1969-1974 showing Ken Light’s early work as he chronicled America and the political upheaval of his generation. In this era, America was deeply divided and at war with itself, yet Americans saw much promise and felt that fundamental change was possible.

It was a time when young people believed they could create a better world. It is a period we should not forget. These photographs share many of the important moments of these times. Light began this work in his late teens and while some of the images were published in the underground newspapers back in the day, many more were not.

Ken and Melanie Light have embarked on a photographic and literary exploration of a region known for its agricultural plenty--and the marginalization of its people. In Valley of Shadows and Dreams they dig deep into the harsh truths of farm workers' daily experience, revealing a deep sense of anger and betrayal toward the destructive legacies of politics, bureaucracy, and control.

The Lights show us once-viable farmland transformed into neighborhoods full of empty tract homes that no workers can afford. We are confonted head-on with the devastating results of foreclosure. We stand in the Community Center food line in Mendota, we slip magically onto a midnight dance floor with migrant workers in Tulare, and we sail out across the San Joaquin River on a rope swing. These photos and stories capture scenes of hardworking people fighting to preserve their livelihoods and traditions.

With an introduction by Thomas Steinbeck and impassioned essays by Melanie Light about the importance of recognizing and rectifying the cycle of employers oppressing workers, Valley of Shadows and Dreams uncovers the realities of life in this troubled but vital region that are often hidden and difficult to capture.