Farmworker I (from the series Glowing Evidence)
Artist
Laurie Tümer
(American, born 1951)
Date2002
Mediumlenticular print
DimensionsImage: 32 1/8 × 22 3/16 in. (81.6 × 56.4 cm)
Frame: 33 5/8 × 23 3/4 × 1 1/2 in. (85.4 × 60.3 × 3.8 cm)
Frame: 33 5/8 × 23 3/4 × 1 1/2 in. (85.4 × 60.3 × 3.8 cm)
ClassificationsPhotograph
Credit LineJane Reese Williams Collection, Museum purchase with funds from the New Mexico Council on Photography, 2016
Object number2016.16
DescriptionFrontal view of man at center of composition, wearing dark long-sleeved shirt and long pants. His arms are at his sides and the palms of his hand are facing viewer. A ventilator mask covers most of his face. From one angle, the viewer sees an image of a farmworker wearing a respirator; from another angle, the same farmworker is seen under ultraviolet light showing evidence of pesticides on his face, hands, and clothing (using the tracing powder instead of pesticides).eMuseum Notes
The series Glowing
Evidence concerns the use of pesticides in agriculture and its resulting
hazards. Using a tracing powder developed by the Pacific Northwest Agriculture
Safety and Health Center to show farmworkers how pesticides spread, Tümer
creates analogous images representing what these traces of pesticides would
look like if we could see them on our food, our skin, and on our children’s
toys. Her method of showing both our visible reality and the invisible traces
of pesticides is to produce lenticular prints, a technique that involves using
lenticular lenses to make a printed image that has the ability to change or
move as it is viewed from different angles. From one angle, the viewer sees an
image of a farmworker wearing a respirator; from another angle, the same
farmworker is seen under ultraviolet light showing evidence of pesticides on
his face, hands, and clothing (using the tracing powder instead of pesticides).
This unusual photographic technique is well suited to the subject and creates a
powerful duality between the visible world and the invisible world of synthetic
pesticides that permeate our lives, strengthening a crop’s resistance to
disease but also linked to human health problems including cancer, asthma, and
chemical sensitivity.
On View
Not on view