News Release

Thirty-seven photos by Time/Life photographer Horace Bristol depicting the lives of farm workers in California’s Central Valley will be on display Sept. 16-Dec. 31 in the Skylight Gallery at the Main Library. The exhibition, A Journey Shared: Photographs by Horace Bristol, will showcase images taken during Bristol’s and author John Steinbeck’s travels together while Steinbeck was researching his book, The Grapes of Wrath. This group of modern prints, which includes prints from Bristol’s Grapes of Wrath portfolio, was on display for the first time at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, Calif. and is now traveling to venues throughout the state. The exhibition is also translated into Spanish for Spanish-speaking visitors.

In 1937, Bristol began making numerous expeditions to the Central Valley with renowned Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographer Dorothea Lange. Bristol proposed a story on migratory farm workers to his editors at Life magazine. When his idea was rejected, Bristol sought out Steinbeck to collaborate on a photographic book.

The two men traveled to labor camps in the Central Valley in the winter of 1937-1938, one of the wettest seasons in California history. Steinbeck’s ability to gather information through his gentle questioning of the field hands allowed Bristol to capture their plight in his photographs. Together, they visited migrant workers, who may have served as inspiration for Tom Joad, Ma and Pa, Little Ruthie, Winfield and other Grapes of Wrath characters. Steinbeck, who had already started working on the novel a year earlier, was so moved by the people and conditions that he and Bristol encountered, that he told Bristol that he needed to tell the story in the form of a novel. Some of Bristol’s photographs were instrumental as set and costume design references for the 1939 film version of The Grapes of Wrath starring Henry Fonda.

After the end of their collaboration, Bristol went on to other projects and put these images aside. In 1991, Bristol revisited these images and published a portfolio of 12 modern prints from this series. A Journey Shared: Photographs by Horace Bristol includes modern prints representing this body of work. Many of Bristol’s photographs have been a permanent part of The Grapes of Wrath exhibit area in the National Steinbeck Center since the museum’s opening in 1998.

As one of the original Life magazine photographers, Bristol’s work was featured alongside preeminent photojournalists such as Margaret Bourke-White and Alfred Eisenstaedt. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Bristol was recruited by famous photographer Edward Steichen to document World War II. Bristol captured images of patriotism and heroism with the human interest side of the story as his visual focal point. Following the war, Bristol spent 25 years living in Asia, documenting post-war modernization. He returned to the U.S. with his family and lived in Ojai, Calif., until his death in 1997.

A Journey Shared is made possible in part by grants from the California Council for the Humanities and the Monterey County Overall Economic Development Commission. Additional support is provided by the members and trustees of the National Steinbeck Center and its Agricultural History and Education Center sponsors.

Related program:

A Journey Shared: Horace Bristol & John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck scholar Susan Shillinglaw and Karen Shinsheimer, curator of Horace Bristol’s work, discuss the collaboration between Steinbeck and Bristol when they documented migrant workers in California during the Great Depression.
Sept. 28
6:30–7:30 p.m.
Koret Auditorium, Main Library

The exhibition and program are free and open to the public.
For more information, please call (415) 557-4277.
Note: Photos are available for publication.