Area Events < Our Stories, Our Lives: Photos of Migrant Labor in the Yakima Valley by Irwin Nash

• Our Stories, Our Lives: Photos of Migrant Labor in the Yakima Valley by Irwin Nash

  03/25/2025 - 06/24/2025

  Arts and Culture Museums

  Exhibit Dates: January 11th - June 24th, Tuesdays - Saturdays, 10am - 5pm. The bounty and diversity of Washington State’s agriculture is possible because of the labor of agricultural workers. However, this work, and the humans who perform it, are often hidden from view. In 1967, Irwin Nash visited the Yakima Valley to take photographs for a freelance magazine piece on valley agriculture. After completing this assignment, he continued to photograph farming communities around Yakima each season until 1976. In the process, he created a compelling archive of more than 9,400 photographs documenting the lives of workers who rarely appear in the historical record. These images capture the moments of daily life—children playing, Chicano student meetings, family scenes, asparagus harvests—and are testimony to an era of rising labor and protest movements, strikes, and social awareness that swept across Washington state and the nation. In collaboration with the WSU Libraries’ Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections (MASC), this exhibition presents a selection of 46 photographs from the Irwin Nash Yakima Valley Migrant Labor Collection. This important collection was largely unknown until its recent digitization by MASC. These photographs inspired the Yakima Valley community to share their stories and help us record previously undocumented histories. yvmuseum.org/ourstories-ourlives-irwinnashphotography 

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  • Location:
    Yakima

    Address
    Yakima Valley Museum, 2105 Tieton Dr, Yakima, WA 98902

    See All Events Hosted by:
    Yakima Valley Museum

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