Migrant community culture will be examined in a special presentation by award-winning photojournalist and author Gary Harwood at 7 p.m. on March 29 in the Lenna Teleconference Theatre on JCC’s Jamestown Campus.

The program, free and open to the public, is sponsored by JCC’s college program committee and the Katharine Jackson Carnahan Endowment for the Humanities.

Harwood, who photographed and co-authored Growing Season: The Life of a Migrant Community, is the recipient of more than 70 regional, national, and international awards and grants for excellence in photography. His March 29 presentation is part of a two-day residency at JCC.

Over 130 migrant camps are operated in Ohio. Growing Season examines one camp located on the K.W. Zellers and Son family farm in Hartville, Ohio. The grower employs about 160 Mexican and Mexican-American workers, but allows entire families to migrate to the farm. Because of this, they have, over time, established their own community of about 300 people on the perimeter of the farm fields. Growing Season is a collection of images and stories that portray this migrant community and the people in the Hartville community that know and support them.

Since its release in 2006, Growing Season has received three book honors: the 2007 Carter G. Woodson Honor Award from the National Council for the Social Studies, the 2007 Ohioana Book Award from the Ohioana Library Association, and 2007 Finalist, Great Lakes Book Award, Great Lakes Booksellers’ Association.

Growing Season was selected as the book for the 2006 Stark County, Ohio “One Book, One Community” community-wide reading program, an initiative of the Mayor’s Literacy Commission.

During his presentation at JCC, Harwood will outline the five-year process that resulted in the publication of Growing Season. The book jacket notes, “In photos and stories, Growing Season celebrates the work and play and religious, medical, familial, and communal experiences of these workers – young, old, male, female – and offers readers a success story. A part of our American landscape, these people and the dedicated, caring group of volunteers who support them teach all of us about dignity and humanity.”

Additional information on the publication can be accessed at www.growingseason.net.

Harwood has won four national Circle of Excellence Awards for photography and instruction from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. A staff photographer at Kent State University for 26 years, Harwood is now a full-time faculty member at Kent State, teaching courses in visual storytelling.

Harwood was a featured presenter during the University Photographers’ Association of America Technical Symposium which JCC hosted last summer.