Great Reads in Photography: May 16, 2021 | PetaPixel
▻https://petapixel.com/2021/05/16/great-reads-in-photography-may-16-2021
Every Sunday, we bring together a collection of easy-reading articles from analytical to how-to to photo-features in no particular order that did not make our regular daily coverage. Enjoy!
Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America — Lenscratch
From “Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America” University of Chicago Press, 2021
Elisa and Family © Mary Beth Meehan, courtesy University of Chicago Press. 2021
Mary Beth Meehan © Molly Heller
Acclaimed photographer Mary Beth Meehan and Silicon Valley culture expert Fred Turner join forces to give us an unseen view of the heart of the tech world.
“With arresting photography and intimate stories, Seeing Silicon Valley makes this hidden world visible,” says Aline Smithson in Lenscratch. “Instead of young entrepreneurs striving for efficiency in minimalist corporate campuses, we see portraits of struggle—families displaced by an impossible real estate market, workers striving for a living wage, and communities harmed by environmental degradation.
“If the fate of Silicon Valley is the fate of America—as so many of its boosters claim—then this book gives us an unvarnished look into the future.”
From “Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America” University of Chicago Press, 2021
Ravi and Gouthami © Mary Beth Meehan, courtesy University of Chicago Press, 2021
Silicon Valley glitters with the promise of extraordinary wealth and innovation. But behind the façade lies a world segregated by race, class, and nationality in complex and contradictory ways.
Cristobal was born in Bakersfield, out in the desert. After high school, he served eight years in the Army, including one tour in the Iraq war. He now works full time as a security guard at Facebook. He starts at dawn, guiding cars on and off the campus, and making sure walkers looking down at their phones cross safely. Despite this job, he has no health benefits, and he can’t afford to have a home in Silicon Valley. He’d like to go back to Bakersfield, to be near his mother, but there’s no work there. So he keeps doing his best. Cristobal feels he works hard, and has given back to his country, but his pay forces him to live in a rented repurposed shed, in a back yard in Mountain View. He’s starting to get angry. “Silicon Valley is a shithole,” he says.
Cristobal © Mary Beth Meehan, courtesy University of Chicago Press, 2021
“For those who have not been fortunate enough to make billionaire lists, for midlevel engineers and food truck workers and longtime residents, the valley has become increasingly inhospitable, testing their resilience and resolve,” say photographer Meehan and Turner in The New York Times.