The Mean Streets of Huron

• Photographer
  Richard Street
• Agency / Studio
  Streetshots

The Mean Streets of Huron explores an unacknowledged variety of American apartheid in Huron, California, a small farm town where an American peasantry slaves for industrialized agriculture. Politics are bloody – one mayor had his automobile shot up by an AK-47; a councilwoman’s home was bombed; another mayor died in prison; his son was assassinated; the northeast and southwest corners of town are controlled by Norteño and Bulldog gangs. In Huron multiple layers of violence, alcoholism, and cruelty are compressed into an extreme example of what 350,000 farmworkers face in California every day.

I am an academically-trained historian who photographs contemporary history, especially in my fields, agriculture, farm labor, and rural poverty