Bridging Eras: Photographer Sam Comen's Travels Through Lost Hills

4 minute read

In the 1930s, in the depths of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Farm Security Administration commissioned photographers like Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans and Arthur Rothstein to document the struggles of countless rural families as they pursued “the American way of life.” Some photographers, Lange in particular, were drawn to the world of migrant laborers in America’s west.

“Those photographers were able to capture a sense of being,” Los Angeles-born photographer Sam Comen told TIME, describing the greatest FSA photographers’ images and their impact on the great American narrative. “Those were the photographs that fed me as a photographer, and I wanted to find a new way to explore a similar American historical narrative.”

This search took him to Lost Hills, a town of fewer than 3,500 people in Southern California located in the same dusty (although transformed) landscape that the field worker communities documented by Lange and company once called home.

“Lost Hills was too much to ignore,” Comen said, describing his reaction to his first visit to the town. “In the same locale where migrant workers had demonstrated that classic frontier spirit and pursued the infamous American dream, the same story was being replayed today.”

That American story is one of struggle and success, of stasis and metamorphosis, of the American immigrant experience and what might well be called the New American Dream. For Comen, Lost Hills is notable because it is typical: a dusty town in the American west, home to ordinary men and women: from immigrants and long-time residents to farm laborers and oil workers.

The project was conceived in the year’s following Comen’s graduation from Northwestern University. Having spent his academic years working at the Daily Northwestern, the Communications and English dual major was moved to document contemporary America’s trials after hearing President Obama employ recession-era rhetoric while discussing the strained American economy in 2009.

Comen wondered if scenes similar to those that played out during the Great Depression were being repeated in today’s strained economy.

But Lost Hills also had something of a mythic character, Comen acknowledged. For example, the celebrated (and, by some, reviled) Mexican-American civil and labor rights activist, Cesar Chavez, organized protests within an hour’s drive of Lost Hills, while the characters in John Steinbeck’s classic novel, The Grapes of Wrath, struggled for jobs, land and dignity in the same hardscrabble landscape captured on film by FSA photographers.

Visually, Comen decided to eschew the traditional approach to documentary photography in his Lost Hills work, choosing instead to artificially light the environment, capturing a documentary topic with the bright color palette and pop-lighting often seen in commercial photography.

Hoping to catch his viewers off-guard, Comen said that his his stylistic choice served as much to break down assumptions — about photography, history and the new American narrative — as to illustrate the duality of the immigrant-American experience.

Similar to American pioneers who chose to migrate west in the 20th century, today’s residents of Lost Hills arrived from far-flung territories eager to construct a life of their own. Unlike the classic American tale, however, these characters are painted as outsiders living within: immigrants —often reduced to “undocumented” or “illegals” by suggestion alone— who have decided to live in American while preserving the cultures they carried with them.

This struggle to find a balance between competing modes of life can be seen most clearly in the photo of 23-year-old Jose, a successful, hard-working young Mexican immigrant employed by a local oil field. Like countless immigrants to the U.S., Jose works to support his extended family. In many ways, Comen said, he embodies the traditional American frontier, or pioneering, spirit. But Jose spends his days off training for equestrian and lariat events — activities deeply associated with his native country. Within the new life he hopes to build, there is an abiding respect for — and a yearning to preserve — his Mexican heritage.

“This image is emblematic about what’s going on in Lost Hills,” Comen told TIME, noting the competing identities of Lost Hills residents make them vulnerable —that they might be, in his words, “denied their place in the American historical record.”

In light of these challenges, Comen hopes that Lost Hills, as a document, can incorporate Mexican and Chicano workers’ voices into the national debate over America —its economy, its mythology, and its history.

“Lost Hills is about more than illuminating life in the town itself,” Comen said. “It’s a metaphor for today’s American experience.”

 


Sam Comen is a photographer based in Los Angeles.

Adam McCauley is a writer and photographer based in New York.


Jose, 23, wears the traditional dress of the charreada, or Mexican rodeo, while astride his colt Chapulín in the front yard of his home in Lost Hills, Calif. Jose keeps the colt and trains in charreada to stay connected to Mexican tradition while establishing a life in the U.S.Sam Comen
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This crew of almond ‘polers’ stands in an orchard during the annual harvest outside of Lost Hills. For two months each fall, fleets of tractors harvest almonds by shaking the trees so vigorously that all but a few nuts fall instantly to the ground. Those that remain are knocked out of the trees manually by men and women using bamboo pikes. The amount of hand labor necessary is staggering: the USDA counted 780,000 acres of nut-bearing almond trees in California in 2012.Sam Comen
Neighbors band together to improve each others’ daily lives in Lost Hills. These friends mix and shovel batch after batch of concrete by hand to pave a new driveway.Sam Comen
Looking south across the eight square-block town on a midsummer morning, the almond orchards that flank the town to the east are visible in the upper left corner of the photo.Sam Comen
The birthday boy’s grandfather plucks him from his father’s arms as the wood chars in the barbeque and tables are set in anticipation of the baby’s first birthday party.Sam Comen
Three generations of a Lost Hills family put their backs into the task at hand: clearing a small collection of cars from a residential property they’ve recently sold.Sam Comen
This worker prepares piles of freshly harvested almonds for outdoor storage. The nuts will be hulled and processed as demand in domestic and global markets dictates.Sam Comen
An almond orchard in bloom sets the scene for a sweet-smelling walk home for a caravan of toddlers, teens, and a single adult. It’s not an atypical scene in Lost Hills, where according to the 2010 Census, 40% of the reporting population is under 17-years-old.Sam Comen
This mother and her first child overlook the California Aqueduct with the lights of an oil processing installation visible on the horizon. Most Lost Hills residents work in agriculture sustained by the aqueduct’s flow; some work high-skilled jobs in oil and gas production.Sam Comen
At a two-year-old’s birthday party the adults look on while the kids line up and wait their turn to take a swing at the piñata.Sam Comen
The seasonal nature of fieldwork means some residents must rely on odd jobs, like clearing brush, to make a living.Sam Comen
A long-time Lost Hills resident power-washes mud from his truck’s chassis while his brother looks on.Sam Comen
The heads of an extensive Lost Hills family pose for a portrait in the home they’ve lived in for thirty years.Sam Comen
A young father prefers his daughter take center stage while his wife looks on from the family trailer in Lost Hills’ trailer park. “Trailer Park,” as it’s simply known in town, is an aging development of 105 mobile homes. Most residents are fieldworkers.Sam Comen
A group of friends play basketball as the sun sets in Lost Hills. If these teens stay in Lost Hills when they enter the job market, they'll choose from agricultural, petroleum, or a small number of service positions. A commute to Wasco (25 minutes away,) Delano (40 minutes away,) or Bakersfield (60 minutes away) will broaden their choices.Sam Comen
Brothers at play in the family pool under a new shed roof in their backyard.Sam Comen
An afternoon game of conquian at Lost Hills’ recently refurbished Paramount Park. In 2016 the County highway that runs through the background of this photo will be doubled in width from two lanes to four, dramatically changing everyday life for Lost Hills’ residents.Sam Comen
Jose feeds his colt Chapulín. Jose works in western Kern County’s oil fields to help support his aunt, uncles, sister, brother, two nieces, and a nephew. On his days off, Jose trains for the equestrian and lariat events and regularly competes with a team at charreadas in the Central Valley and Los Angeles.Sam Comen
Extended family and friends gather to celebrate a baptism and dance to the music of a tamborazo zacatecano horn and drum ensemble.Sam Comen
Two young boys take aim m at empty soda cans with an air rifle at their cousins’ home in Lost Hills on Christmas Eve.Sam Comen
On a mandatory 15-minute break, this pomegranate picker rests in the shade of pomegranate shrubs near Lost Hills. While technological innovations have mechanized the harvesting of many other crops, to preserve their appearance, pomegranates to be retailed as fresh fruit are picked and sorted by hand.Sam Comen
Christmas day in a Lost Hills kitchen. This man’s sons, nephews, and nieces support him by working in the nearby fields picking crops by hand; when I made this photograph, pomegranate sizing gauges hung just out of view on the kitchen wall.Sam Comen
Three siblings gather around their table for lunch on Christmas Day along with the newest addition to their family and their neighbor’s daughter.Sam Comen
A crew cuts and packs red leaf lettuce near Huron, Calif. California produces more than half of all the fruits, vegetables, and nuts in the United States. In terms of agricultural output, the Central Valley — which extends 500 miles along the length of the state between Redding and Bakersfield — is the most productive agricultural region in the country.Sam Comen

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