"Suburban Lights, 1988"
Suburban Lights, 1988
Don Bartletti
Media: B&W Selenium Toned Silver Gelatin (vintage print)
At the end of his workday, a Mexican-born laborer tends a cooking fire outside his hand made sleeping shack in Carlsbad, California on May 2, 1988. Hundreds of recent arrivals seeking a toehold on the California dream live in the so-called Valle Verde squatter’s camp on an undeveloped hillside. There’s no rent, electricity, running water or bathrooms – but there’s plenty of work here in upper middle-class suburbia north of San Diego. This man is employed 6 days a week by a carpet installer who picks him up on nearby El Camino Real.
