February 29, 2004
Exhibit Offers a Portrait of Immigrant Workers
Photos Document Hopes And Struggles of Janitors Trying to Build Better Life
By Sylvia Moreno
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 29, 2004; Page C05
Rafael Ernesto Gonzalez cleans offices in a K Street office building, where he toils unobtrusively among the well-heeled lawyers and their secretaries rushing home to their families and homes and dinners.
It may be easy for some to overlook Gonzalez, a low-paid janitor who speaks but a few words of English, but his concerns are shared by many in his situation. He worries about his neighbors. He feels lonely. He struggles to pay his rent. He feels guilty for the months he can't send money home to El Salvador because his second part-time job ended. He strongly supports workers' rights. He's deeply religious, and he's proud to be Latino. But he feels undervalued in this country, and he has a message for the White House and Congress.
"Señor presidente, we are not a burden to this society," Gonzalez, 38, said. "I always say that if one day the Hispanic community stops working, that would have a great impact in this country because we contribute so very much."
Gonzalez has expressed some of his thoughts in a photographic exhibit, on display at the District's municipal building, that is designed to give a voice to one of the least visible and most marginalized workers in the region: the immigrant janitor.
The exhibit, called unseenwashington, is a project sponsored by the Service Employees International Union Local 82, which represents 8,000 workers in the Washington area. Almost all are janitors, and two-thirds are Latino immigrants.
"Immigrants are such a completely ignored segment of the population and often misunderstood as well," said Ian Birlem, a spokesman for Local 82. "By taking cameras . . . and putting it straight into [the immigrants'] own hands, they've been able to communicate their reality in a way that's very tangible and meaningful."
Among the black-and-white photos on display through Thursday in the atrium of the John A. Wilson Building is a picture of the ceiling of Reagan National Airport by Sagrario Mutate. The picture is titled "Open Umbrellas" and shows the steel columns and trusses that support the airport's domes and skylights. But the caption, written by Mutate, belies the simplicity of the title and the image.
"My first job in America was at National Airport," Mutate wrote. "When I worked there it was difficult. I was so scared I looked down while I worked. Now I go back there and it's different. I look up and I see forms and the beauty of the airport."
The project is an offshoot of a national program initiated by SEIU Local 1199, which represents 200,000 health care workers in New York. Its cultural arm, Bread and Roses, started the project, arming members with point-and-shoot cameras. That project, called unseenamerica, as well as the pictures from unseenwashington will be included in a book to be published by Bread and Roses.
The Washington project was funded by the cultural arm of Local 82, Greenhouse Cultural Project, and the Washington Area Partnership for Immigrants, a funding collaborative of the Community Foundation. Seven Latino janitors met every Saturday for 10 weeks at the Washington Center for Photography in Bethesda. Penn Camera provided cameras at a discount; processing and developing was subsidized by Chrome Photographic Services.
"Oftentimes you don't know how much enthusiasm is going to be in a classroom, but they got excited," said Paul Pavot, the instructor. "They started coming in with two rolls of pictures every week."
The result, he said, was "a sneak peek into their lives."
"You saw the views they're seeing, homeless people in the street, children playing in the park, finding the beauty in their co-workers or window scrapers that look like a ballet on the side of a building."
Among Gonzalez's pictures in the exhibit is one of a smiling, chubby boy sitting on the front step of their apartment building and another of a union organizer talking to janitors surrounded by their garbage cans, vacuum cleaners and trash bags.
Gonzalez said he worried about the child because he lived in a two-bedroom basement apartment with nine other people. The boy also reminded him of his own three children, whom he misses so much, Gonzalez said. "One day [the people] all moved out, and I don't know where he is now," Gonzalez wrote in the caption.
As for the picture of the organizer, he wrote, "Communication is very important when it comes to improving janitors' lives."
Rosa Alcantara took a self-portrait, using the camera's timer, as she stood on a friend's porch, looking into the early morning sun. "All day I work with chemicals," she wrote in her caption. "I like to go out and see the sun, get fresh air. In my country, I could walk around, but here, my neighborhood isn't safe."
Some photos have obvious messages, such as the one of a young couple dressed up for the girl's quinceanera, or Sweet 15. Others do not, such as the shot by Maria Beatriz Medrano Flores of a construction site adorned by an American flag. She titled it "A Place in Washington" and explained that the scene means much more than a banner upon concrete, steel and scaffolding.
"The flag is important because it is a symbol of this country," she wrote in the caption. "In this country there are opportunities for immigrants to improve their lives and help their families."
