Brazilian sugar cane cutters spend up to 10 months of the year living far from their families, cutting 8 to 10 tons of sugar cane a day for $1.35 per hour -- a little-seen consequence of the expanding biofuel industry.
In an exhibit at Duke University's Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy, photographs by Emma Raynes document efforts to strengthen connections between 40 absent fathers and their families through photography, correspondence and recorded dialogue.
The exhibit, "Pai, Estou Te Esperando/ Father, I Am Waiting for You," will be displayed from Feb. 13-July 31. An opening reception at the institute, from 5 to 6 p.m. Feb. 12, is free and open to the public.
Raynes, a 2007 Lewis Hines Fellow with the Duke Center for Documentary Studies, will talk about her work with the nonprofit Centro Popular de Cultura e Desenvolvimento in Araçuaí, Brazil. In this drought-plagued region known as the Valley of Misery, nearly 20 percent of the workforce leaves in the spring to work as sugar cane cutters.
Raynes will be introduced by documentary photographer Alex Harris, creative director of the Lewis Hines program and Duke professor of the practice of public policy.
"I am hoping an exhibition of this work will draw attention to how the separation and dislocation caused by seasonal migration of sugar cane cutters impacts children and their families," Raynes said.
A graduate of Bowdoin College, Raynes earned a certificate in documentary studies from Duke in 2005 and was selected as a Lewis Hines Fellow for 2006-07. The Lewis Hines Documentary Fellows Program places recent graduates in fellowships with humanitarian nongovernmental and nonprofit organizations in the United States and abroad for 10-month periods.
For more on Raynes' project, visit her blog: <emma-daqui.blogspot.com/>.