"Would he be interested in taking four months off from school in Michigan to come out west, drive around, and take pictures of the state's poor and working-class populations? An eager Turnley jumped at the chance and ended up spending the summer of 1975 traversing California in his tiny white Volkswagen, doing everything from spending time with migrant farmworkers in the San Joaquin valley to hopping trains with travelers looking for work to chatting up Oaklanders about how they were making ends meet."
"When I was a freshman in college at the University of Michigan, during the winter break, I went back to Fort Wayne, Indiana, which is where I'm from. There was a very progressive mayor in power at that point and he assembled a really interesting group of people in his city government. When I began photography at the age of 16, I decided to use it to try to change the world,"
At age 20, Peter Turnley took four months off college to document California's poor and working-class for the California Office of Economic Opportunity. He spent the summer of 1975 traveling in a tiny white Volkswagen, spending time with migrant farmworkers in the San Joaquin Valley, hopping trains with travelers seeking work, and speaking with Oakland residents about how they made ends meet. The OEO contact left mid-project and submitted prints were not released. The California images, along with other photographs taken in Paris, will be exhibited at the Leica Gallery in Los Angeles on Dec. 4. Turnley began photography at 16 to influence public policy and had been hired by Fort Wayne's mayor to shoot city-focused themes.
Read at Los Angeles Times
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