Published: April 4, 2007
A culmination of more than ten years of work, the photographs from Perry Dilbeck's new book, The Last Harvest, affectionately document the disappearing livelihood of the Southern truck farmer. A crucial part of the project was forming close relationships with the farmers whose lives he documented in The Last Harvest. In approaching the project, he started out with a vision, stimulated in part by Avedon's In the American West series. And Dilbeck continued with fiscal sponsorship and peer support, which culminated in a close working relationship with University of Georgia Press and Center for American Places.
Armed with a tape recorder in addition to the camera, he recorded the farmers' stories and memories, which are sprinkled throughout his book. "I like to get to know the people before I shove a camera in their face," he said, visiting them multiple times before photographing them. Small and independent operators, truck farmers typically own fewer than forty acres of land and sell their vegetables and fruits at roadside stands or local farmers' markets. In recent years, the rise of large-scale commercial farming coupled with overdevelopment, which swallows up farmland daily, has greatly diminished this traditional business. "You can see the wonderful pride and dignity in the farmers' faces and the sense of loss in their eyes; I greatly admire their passion and work ethics. People today just don't have that kind of work ethic. They don't know what it is like to grow their own food for survival and they have never really had to worry about where there next meal is coming from."
Dilbeck said one of the most difficult parts of the project was not taking the pictures, but rather processing hundreds of rolls of film in the darkroom, making prints, writing letters to book publishers, editing many hours of taped interviews, and deciding on the final sequence of images to use for the book. Microsoft Office PowerPoint was used to preview images and to get an overall feel of how the book would flow from page to page. Slide shows incorporating the farmers' voices with the images were used extensively in Office PowerPoint presentations used for lectures, gallery exhibitions, and promotional purposes for the project.
In preparing the images for the monograph, all original black-and-white prints were scanned using a high resolution drum scanner. Using Photoshop, the images then were retouched and a slightly warm tone duotone color was selected for the final printing process. With the publisher, Dilbeck had to go through three complete sets of proofs before all the images were of correct density and tonality.
Dilbeck adds, "There are many sacrifices to be made when working with a publisher. For instance, the editor wanted to use a different cover image than what I intended to use for the book. Some disagreements also arose with the small size of the back image for the dust jacket as well, but from a marketing standpoint, the inclusion of well known author blurbs on the back seemed essential."
Literally, well over a thousand rolls of film were shot for this project in several Southern states with hundreds of images to select from. To make a more coherent and marketable title, only farmers from the state of Georgia were included in The Last Harvest. There were over 108 images initially considered for the monograph; these had to be narrowed down to 64 images because of the farmer quotations, introduction, and conclusion.
Another difficult task was obtaining funding for a long term documentary project, but Dilbeck was awarded sponsorship by Blue Earth Alliance in Seattle, WA. This non-profit organization supports photography projects that educate the public about endangered cultures, threatened environments, and social issues. Blue Earth Alliance provided film, grant writing assistance, and exhibition opportunities to The Last Harvest project. They were substantial in opening doors to the publishing industry, acting as an advocate and first supporter of the work. They really supplied the earnestness to continue the project to its fruition.
Dilbeck's photographic journey began in 1985. Dilbeck was fortunate to view Avedon's portraits from the In the American West series. "The power of these images changed my life forever. I quit business school and immediately enrolled in photography school." Since then, he has received a B.F.A. in Photography from Georgia State University and an M.F.A. in Photography from the Savannah College of Art & Design. Since 1998, Dilbeck has been a full-time instructor at the Art Institute of Atlanta.
Part of his passion began with Avedon's series and continued with the early encouragement of Blue Earth Alliance. "For someone just beginning in the photography field, I just suggest that you study every photography book and magazine you can get your hands on to help to stay current with all the changing trends in photography. Eat, sleep, dream, and breathe photography and simply never give up if you want to succeed in this business!" Passion provides the path to inspiration and completion.
His photographs have appeared in LensWork, Photo District News, Photo Art International, Black & White, Graphis, The British Journal of Photography, and numerous other magazines. His work resides in permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas; Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin; Photo-Eye Books & Prints in Santa Fe, New Mexico; and Savannah College of Art and Design among others.
