User:Littlesalmon/Ernest Lowe

Biography
Ernest Lowe was born in 1930...

Career
Ernest Lowe studied photography in the late 1950s with John Collier Jr., while concurrently looking at the classic images of Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and other Farm Security Administration photographers.

In 1959, Lowe joined the staff of the San Francisco Bay Area-based radio station KPFA, and almost immediately began documenting the lives of migrant farm workers. Between 1960 and 1964, Lowe concentrated his efforts in California’s Central Valley and the Black migrant townships just outside of Fresno.

At the end of his first year with KPFA, Lowe showed his work to Dorothea Lange who loaned him a 35mm Contax camera and funds to cover film and expenses. He traveled up and down the San Joaquin and Salinas Valley s documenting labor camps and shack towns and the grueling work required in the bountiful fields and orchards.

Works
Lowe's black and white photographs are carefully composed, quiet moments frozen in time. His imagery feels monumental, capturing icons of migrant life; his photographs are respectful, intensely personal portraits of people in their places of home and work.
 * Famous work here
 * Another famous work here
 * Another famous work here

Exhibits

 * deYoung Museum, San Francisco—the original Don’t Cry for Me Babey