JTF (just the facts): Published in 2024 by KWY Ediciones (book link here). Multi-fold softcover (in gold ink on black paper) with gold string binding, with 58 black-and-white photographs. Includes an essay by Tutupika Carrillo de la Cruz (In Spanish/Wixárika/English) and a poem/lyrics by Luis Pérez Meza (in Spanish). In an edition of 800 copies. Design by Vera Lucía Jiménez. (Cover and spread shots below.)
Comments/Context: The Mexican photographer César Rodríguez made his artistic presence known a few years ago with his excellent 2022 photobook Montaña Roja. It was an elegantly surprising book (reviewed here), visually telling the story of poppy farmers living in the mountainous region of Guerrero, in southern Mexico. Not only were Rodríguez’ black-and-white photographs sensitive and immersively tactile, the design of the photobook object was unexpectedly innovative, featuring a three-part folded setup with the images rotated and interleaved.
Rodríguez’ recent photobook Hoja Dorada is in many ways a companion volume to Montaña Roja, at least in terms of its overall conception and execution. Hoja Dorada shares similar design and construction decisions with its predecessor (although the red highlights in the first book have been replaced here with gold string binding and gold ink printing), and the general theme of chronicling the lives of overlooked or marginalized Mexican farmers is repeated here, albeit with a different group, from a different region, farming a different crop. This commonality between the two books is a strength, in that it creates a pattern of thinking that ties the two separate situations together into a common framework.
Hoja Dorada (or “Golden Leaf” in English) centers its attention on indigenous Wixaritari families, who live in the mountains of Jalisco, Nayarit, and other nearby states and travel to work in the tobacco fields on the coast. The agricultural region in Nayarit irrigated by the Río Grande de Santiago was once called the Gold Coast due to the profits made by the large tobacco companies, but Rodríguez’ photographs tell a much less gilded story, of migrant laborers traveling long distances on foot and living for months at a time (during the cutting season) in the tobacco fields where they work.
Rodríguez has been working on the images in Hoja Dorada for nearly a decade, getting to know the families, visiting them in the fields, and eventually accompanying back to their homes in the mountains. What he found wasn’t always pretty, with whole families living (and sleeping) in flimsy tents right in the tobacco fields, cooking on makeshift stoves, and bathing in the irrigation canals contaminated by the chemical herbicides and pesticides, but Rodríguez consistently captures the humanity and the dignity to be found in these poor working conditions.
Early on in Hoja Dorada, Rodríguez gives us a feel for the movement taking place. In one image, an outstretched arm points to a distant field, and in another, a silhouetted man walks along an empty road down from the mountains. In these two pictures, which share a spread (and in another at the end of the book, which documents the walk home), Rodríguez captures the essence of the seasonal migration, and the economic imperative behind it – leaving home and going there, in search of wages that can pay for things that families need.
As we might expect, many of the images in this photobook document the everyday tasks of growing and harvesting tobacco. As the pages turn, Rodríguez shows us close up tobacco leaves, workers carrying bundles of tobacco, piles of tobacco leaves and loose twine, and improvised racks filled with hanging and drying tobacco leaves (which happen to create lyrical patterns and shadows). We also see plenty of men and women at work, mostly cutting leaves in dense fields that stand as tall as they are, but also filling plastic jugs with milky white liquids and spraying the tobacco leaves with chemicals.
More resonant are Rodríguez’ images of the living conditions of these families, particularly the cloth tents anchored with ropes right in the fields and the thatched lean-tos crafted to create some shade from the punishing sun. Young men, children, and infants alike doze in these wispy tents or in the dappled light of the covered areas, in some cases leaning directly on piles of harvested tobacco. Rodríguez’ portraits are infused with a reserved sense of resignation and weariness, the hard work in the fields meagerly rewarded with a nap in the shade.
Nearby, makeshift stoves and open fires provide the means for cooking modest meals, which are stewed in pots or broiled on grills and then shared in communal plates. Since there are no stores nearby, food supplies are sold to the workers by the companies themselves, creating both limited options and the age old possibilities of exploitation that come with buying (or borrowing) from the company store. When the heat rises, a few workers are tempted to wash or swim in the nearby irrigation ditches, but the welts and spots on one young boy’s skin attest to the dangers present there. In all of these pictures, Rodríguez deliberately settles into the rhythms of dully repeated days – cutting tobacco, grinding corn, cooking maize, sleeping in the shade, freshly cut papaya, bare feet, infants on shoulders, and long nights sitting by the fire.
The spiritual side of the lives of these migrant workers is somewhat harder to discern, but Rodríguez’ pays attention to small shrines that pop up in nearby caves and costumed rituals that are staged at the seaside. For the indigenous peoples, not only do the ways of agriculture have deep connections to the Earth, but tobacco itself was used ceremonially, for healing, as well as recreationally, so it has a much broader cultural significance to these workers than just its monetary value. A few images find Rodríguez completing the circle and following the migrants all the way home to the mountains, where birds soar from the treetops, kids toss rocks off the cliffs, and small mud houses stand in clearings.
Stylistically, Rodríguez’ photographs settle into the middle tones of black-and-white, where dappled greys give texture to drying tobacco, falling light, and transparent cloth. Some of his strongest images are essentially texture studies, where a split melon, a light spotted nap, or the dusty haze of the fields tells its own story, and the juxtaposition of images across the spread or interleaved with the other sections creates echoes of softened mood and muted tonality.
Like so many visual studies of workers around the globe, Hoja Dorada is rooted in the dream of a better life, and the willing investment of hard work and communal knowledge that is often under appreciated or exploited by large companies in search of profits. But Rodríguez wrestles with these realities with compassion and thoughtfulness, not shying away from the grimness of the situation but turning us back to the resiliency of the people who are making do with so little. He has found honesty and even beauty in this work, and in the cyclical migrations that bring the people back again and again.
Collector’s POV: César Rodríguez does not appear to have consistent gallery representation at this time, As a result, interested collectors should likely connect directly with the photographer via his website (linked in the sidebar).
