The World Through a Lens
The Searing Beauty, and Harsh Reality, of a Kentucky Tobacco Harvest
At a family farm in Shelby County, a group of 26 men from Nicaragua and Mexico perform the grueling seasonal work that Americans largely avoid.
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I step into the tobacco field as the first rays of sunlight begin to pierce the early-morning fog. The men of the cutting crew are already hard at work harvesting the tall burley tobacco plants that have taken root in the soil over the past few months. The sound of hatchets resonates across the field: thwack, thwack, thwack.
With each swing, another tobacco plant is felled in the fields of Shelby County, Ky.
The workers skewer freshly cut plants onto a wooden tobacco stick, five at a time, the slender metal cone placed at one end of the stick allowing them to pierce the fibrous stalk. Their shirts are already completely soaked through — not just with sweat, but with the morning dew that coats the green and yellow leaves of the tobacco plants.
Over the course of the morning, the field slowly transforms from a leafy jungle into a set of uniformly shorn rows.
Driven by my interest in the cultures and traditions of my home state of Kentucky, I photographed my first tobacco harvest eight years ago. Each year since then, I’ve eagerly returned.
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