>> Cailee Beltran: Hello,
my name is Cailee Beltran,
and I'm from El Paso, Texas.
I'm also a recent graduate
in history and English
and American literature from the
University of Texas at El Paso.
Having worked with my
hometown's history museum
and university's
Oral History Center,
I have become increasingly
interested
in how we can make these
spaces more accessible for all.
As a 2022 Junior Fellow for the
Digital strategy Directorate,
and Office of the Chief
Information Officer,
I will be working with the
Connecting Communities Digital
Initiative on the
Enhancing Access Libraries,
Archives and Museums project.
For my Junior Fellow
project, I was interested
in creatively reworking
the photographs found
in the Farm Security
Administration,
and Office of War Information's
black-and-white negatives
digital collection.
This digital collection
offers a pictorial record
of American life
between 1935 and 1944.
With about 175,000,
black-and-white film negatives,
this government photography
project would capture the
experiences of those
working in the fields
of California's booming
agribusiness, and other parts
of rural life throughout the US.
Initially an assignment
to document white Dust
Bowl refugees in the West,
photographer Dorothea Lange
would ignore the FSA's strict
racial limitations on content
being produced, and instead,
travel all over California,
capturing images of people
of color and foreign
born field workers.
Langue would visit the
Imperial Valley where most
of the population working
in the fields before the
Dust Bowl were Mexican
and Mexican-Americans migrating
all throughout the state.
Bordering Mexico, the
Imperial Valley was known
as an irrigation empire that
brought a constant stream
of work and labor
opportunities year-round.
Mexican migrant farmworkers
as well
as other foreign-born people of
color would flock to the region.
In her expose, Lange
would reveal
that the fields were
often a place of injustice
by documenting those in poverty
and substandard living
conditions.
Through digital storytelling,
this project will examine
and contextualize
selected photographs
from the Imperial Valley
that Lange captured
during her FSA assignment.
This story map will serve as a
memory project that will center
on the experiences of Mexican
and Mexican-American
field workers photographed
by Lange during the
Great Depression
and FSA migrant camps.
By creating a narrative
alongside Lange's images
and descriptive captions,
this project will consider
who are the people in the
photos, what did life look
like for them, and
what can we learn
from Lane's lengthy
photograph captions?
I'm excited to learn and use
the ArcGIS story map platform
which will allow me to develop
and design an accessible
storytelling experience
that represents and puts forth
the important stories of Mexican
and Mexican-American communities
within the FSA digital
collection.
Thank you.