What is remarkable about Goldner’s reports of his trek are the attitudes he encountered and the willingness of the people to "share their afflictions", not to raise, as he called it "pity", but to give vent to feelings of displacement and the missed opportunities of their past. His writing records thoughts of anger, sadness, joy, and, then, happiness, in his continuing trek around the Central Valley.
Goldner’s photographs portray not so much suffering and unhappiness but create for us a brief look into a different vision as opposed to the one so heavily used as a political weapon by opponents of large California
growers (as portrayed by John Steinbeck
in his books The Grapes of Wrath and the newspaper articles he
wrote entitled Their Blood is Strong). To the people Goldner met,
the current negative circumstances in which they found themselves was
all temporary. Those completely without hope, he reports, would not or
could not speak to him.
The photographic "trek" took place during
January, February, and March of 1940 (although he reports visiting areas
until June of that year). His visits took him to camps near Bakersfield
up as far north as Red Bluff. His task was not to look at how their
migrant parents or the children laboriously worked in the fields. His
employer wanted to understand how migrant life and California’s
maligned rural education system was influencing these children. Was public
instruction in rural California doing its job under the circumstances?
After viewing the images how would you answer that question?
Goldner’s photographs are truly documentary. They
"catch" our eyes with their ability to show life progressing
as usual—home, school, and family—most of the time. The images
displayed here have been chosen to represent his style and intent. Children
were his subject, homes and schools and other places were secondary, although
all ended up being important byproducts of his work.»