'The Hands that Feed Us'

The thousands of unseen farmworkers who make our daily meals possible are the subject of an exhibit of work by artist Jimmy Dorantes, to be presented by The Photographer’s Eye in Escondido. "The Hands That Feed Us" will open on May 9 at the nonprofit gallery, with an artist’s visit and reception on opening day from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., and will close on June 6.

The Photographer's Eye Gallery

Dorantes has been photographing along the U.S.-Mexico border from a very young age, as his mother gave him his first camera at the age of three. His childhood home was on First Street in Calexico, directly across from the border fence, giving him a front-row seat on an ongoing social issue. Dorantes remembers border-crossers sleeping on the roof of his family home and hiding in a backyard tree to evade the Border Patrol.

Dorantes is a visual storyteller who spent 25 years as a contract photojournalist for TIME magazine when it served as a major source for international news.

"The Hands That Feed Us" is a personal homage to his roots, as Dorantes counted friends, neighbors and relatives among laborers working the fields. His mother’s family harvested crops in the Imperial Valley and traveled north during the Dust Bowl to find work.

“It’s a very personal subject,” Dorantes said. “What I’ll be showing are pictures of migrant life, migrant workers sweating out in the fields like my mom would talk about. When I photograph the migrant workers, I’m kind of reliving the stories my mother shared with me.”

One of Dorantes’ earliest portraits is of a 93-year-old farm worker he shot in 1974, when Dorantes was a 14-year-old high school student.

“My friend, my high school buddy, said, ‘You have to take a picture of my grandfather. You’re not going to believe what he looks like,’” Dorantes recalled. The black and white image, "Mr. Nogales," shows nearly a century of field work in the man’s weathered face.

Dorantes’ work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the California Museum of Photography in Riverside, and the Museum of Photographic Arts (MoPA) in San Diego. His book, “The Observant Eye,” received an honorable mention in the documentary books category in the 2025 International Photography Awards.

The Photographer's Eye Gallery

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