Tobacco Harvest: An Elegy is a candid portrait of a bygone way of life—a time before cheaper tobacco imported from abroad and a public awareness of the health risks associated with tobacco use nearly destroyed the industry in the United States. Berry’s words and Hall’s photographs offer an understanding of the high standards and perfectionism required to produce a good harvest, as well as a glimpse of the hot sun, the dirt, and the people hard at work.
“In 1973, James Baker Hall photographed these scenes and events of a Kentucky tobacco harvest. We look at them now with a sort of wonder, and with some regret, realizing that while our work was going on, powerful forces were at play that would change the scene and make “history” of those lived days, which were enriched for us then by their resemblance to earlier days and to days that presumably were to follow.”―Wendell Berry, from the book
