Bruce Haley spent his formative years on a small ranch in the southwestern portion of California's San Joaquin Valley, in an area between Lemoore and Riverdale known as the Island District. Not the sort of young man who was easily contained indoors (setting a pattern that would last a lifetime), he ran the land, rode horses and dirt bikes across the fields, and grew up. Haley is a Robert Capa Gold Medal winner and celebrated internationally for his war and documentary work that took him to Somalia, Afghanistan, Burma, and elsewhere. For this deeply personal project, he turns his camera homeward, to this agriculture-rich San Joaquin Valley. The resulting images, haunting and melancholy, play out against the larger framework of contentious water politics and land use issues.
