I grew up on a small family farm in suburban Long Island, and first contacted the Southside Community Land Trust when I moved to Providence in 2001 and looked for land on which I could garden. The mission of the Land Trust is to partner with neighbors and community agencies in low-income neighborhoods to convert vacant lots and underutilized land into productive food gardens and market farms.
I began photographing in the community gardens in 2004 and, as I have worked on documentary projects and assignments nationally, I have revisited the gardens in Providence and continued to photograph there. The photographs shown here are from my last visit in 2011 and will be used in a media campaign in Spring of 2012 to connect city residents with the information they need to gain access to land and to grow food.
I chose the Land Trust because of the diversity of the population they serve, the effectiveness of their model and the significance of the need for their services in the communities in which they work. Because of widespread poverty in the city, affordable healthy food would for many of the gardeners be otherwise unavailable. Providence has for generations been a refuge for recent immigrants who left their homelands to escape violent conflicts, economic insecurity or environmental disasters. Many come from agrarian backgrounds and the gardens that the Land Trust administers allow gardeners to provide food for their families and to continue their cultural traditions despite being landless.
