A Year Long Embed On a California Pot Farm

New piece over on Vantage about photographer H. Lee‘s embed on a Humboldt County weed farm.

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In 2010, Lee spent a year running up to the fiercely contested Proposition 19 documenting the activities on a pot farm.

Prop. 19 was a ballot initiative that proposed regulation and taxing of the California marijuana industry. Small-holding growers feared its passage would mean the destruction of their livelihoods. Lee had been visiting the pot farm for 8 years prior but never made an image. Then, in 2010, when massive and crushing change loomed, she took up her camera.

 H. Lee is a psuedonym. Promising subjects their anonymity by proxy of her own just made things easier.

“I gave my word to the people I photographed — whether I shot their faces, body parts, plants or farms — that I would use a pseudonym when presenting the work,” says Lee. “I only photographed those who were willing to be photographed.”

Prop 19 was voted down in November 2010.

Read the full story and see photos very large at Vantage: Inside the California Weed Industry

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