More than 50 images of Marin County life captured by Latino photographers over the past 20 years are on display at Art Works Downtown in San Rafael.

The photographers captured moments that include spectacular views of Marin’s hills, vivid portraits of proud faces in feathered Aztec headgear and a painterly image of a white bouquet dangling from a woman’s raven hair. The collection also records simple moments of home life such as a child’s birthday celebration, a cutting board covered with diced vegetables and a cowboy-hatted singer crooning on a living room television.

Ruben Robledo photographed oyster farm workers standing above hundreds of shells after a long day’s work. Teresa Gutierrez took a close-up shot of elderly hands stitching a bright pink blanket. Three restaurant kitchen workers are described as “A Pride of Latina Princesses” in a portrait by Estela Macias.

The images are showcased in “Dos Decadas,” a retrospective of photographs from the Latino Photography Project, which primarily teaches photography to Latino immigrants in Marin County. This show began in late September and will have its final reception on Nov. 10. Art Works Downtown collaborated with Point Reyes Station’s Gallery Route One, which has been showcasing the project’s work since its inception.

“Right away, we wanted visitors to the exhibit to see a part of Marin that they might not see on their own, that they might not have access to on their own, or that they may not know exists,” said “Dos Decadas” curator Mabel Jimenez.

The Latino Photography Project started in 2003 when Gallery Route One members reached out to Latino immigrants in western Marin. The organizers offered to teach them photography and provide cameras so they could document their lives and community.

“My dearest wish is that other towns will try this,” project co-founder and coordinator Nancy Bertelsen said at Art Works Downtown. “It brought a lot of joy and connectivity.”

Bertelsen encourages viewers to connect with migrants. She said every town “has a group of immigrants who came to do some necessary work.”

“Why not get to know them? Why not connect?” she said. “It would also be wonderful to melt the xenophobia.”

The project’s photographs were displayed across the country and featured in a documentary film on PBS. In 2020, Jimenez worked with the project’s photographers on “She Inspires Me,” an effort to take portraits of women leaders in their community. Their pictures and essays were published in a book. An early show had portraits of Marin County’s Latino workers as part of the theme, “Who opens the doors of the town?”

Elisabeth Setten, the executive director of Art Works Downtown, recalled that visitors at the “Dos Decadas” show wanted to know why the photographers weren’t being widely publicized.

“The voices being represented are mostly Latinx farmworkers who are out in west Marin. They are the spine of the county with the work they do, and yet their stories are not shared as readily with the community,” she said. “These are not professional photographers, these are house cleaners, shop workers, agriculture workers who never had a camera before to take photographs and document their lives through their lens, and not have somebody else photograph for them.”

Art Works Downtown held a discussion online Wednesday with the Latino Photography Project’s founders and photographers.

Luz Elena Castro, a photojournalist and a project co-founder, said that she was originally asked by Bertelsen, then a Gallery Route One member, to photograph ranch families in western Marin. She instead wanted to enable them to become photographers.

“Why don’t we do something different like finding cameras and with the cameras we go and visit them, explain they can own the cameras?” Castro said.

She said the project’s organizers wanted to teach them how to see life through the camera lens.

Gisela Alvarado, a ranch resident who took classes with the Latino Photography Project, has a windshield-view shot of a fog-shrouded Golden Gate Bridge on display at the retrospective show. She described her love of capturing “magic moments” in her lens.

“I’ve been shooting magic moments like sunsets, I don’t waste moments to take those beautiful photos,” Alvarado said through a translator.

Juanita Romo recalled making tamales so she could raise funds to buy a better camera when she joined the project. She said she enjoys photographing events such as a first communions and quinceañeras.

Jacob Leyva, an Inverness resident who studied silversmithing in Mexico, photographed field workers in Bolinas and took a close-up shot of hands holding a cement bucket. He said the project empowered him to become involved in his community.

“It wasn’t a question about … your immigration status, it was just, ‘Do you want to learn how to take pictures?’”

Jimenez said the project’s 20 years of work is a repository of Marin County life, courtesy of the students.

“They created a visual, historic archive that’s like a little slice of Marin that we can now look back on, and generations can look back on,” Jimenez said.

“Dos Decadas: Una Retrospectiva del Latino Photography Project” ends Nov. 10. Art Works Downtown at 1337 Fourth St. in San Rafael is open from 1 to 8 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. More information is online at ArtsWorksDowntown.org.

Nestled amidst the lush expanses of the Snoqualmie Valley resides photographer Ken Shipley, whose pictures are a vivid celebration of the Pacific Northwest’s untamed beauty.

Shipley’s love for photography started when he was young, growing up in San Diego in a makeshift darkroom engineered by his father. This space swiftly became Ken’s creative haven, starting a passion that would later be nurtured through his active roles in high school and college, earning a degree in journalism at SDSU.

Ken’s early professional journey into the world of local news post-college was marked by an unrewarding struggle for financial viability, ultimately compelling him to pursue more stable career avenues. However, his love for photography remained, and he later embraced the art form again, this time in the swiftly evolving digital era.

Says Ken, “When I first started with digital, I was a little arrogant. I thought, I know how to work a camera. Light is still light; glass is still glass; how different can it be? I was humbled pretty quickly and spent a lot of time alone during the pandemic trying to figure out the nuances of making a good raw file. A good negative was the key to a good image in the past. The raw file serves that same purpose today.”

Today, Ken’s engagement with photography is marked by an altruistic, almost philosophical aversion to commercialization. “I don’t really sell my work. I’m almost militantly against it. In my first go-round, having to make photography pay took all the fun out of it. At this point, it’s entirely a labor of love. Catch and release, like my old fly-fishing hobby.”

Shipley is also reluctant to give his work away. He feels like he’s taking money out of the hands of working artists. His work is freely shared, finding its home across social media platforms. His Instagram feed has become a digital gallery, offering a window into the landscapes and poignant moments that define the valley he calls home. Still, Ken says, “If there are community groups out here in the valley who need some photo work done, look me up. I’m all about community.” His contact information can be found at shipley-nw.com.

The choice for Ken and his family to lay down roots in the quaint town of North Bend was as much a stroke of fate as it was a financial decision. Says Ken of their move, “It was a total accident. My wife and I were living in Seattle, and we both got jobs on the east side. We went looking in Bellevue. Too expensive. Issaquah. Too expensive. We wandered into North Bend — my wife grew up in Auburn and went to 6th-grade camp at Camp Waskowitz, and she thought the bus had driven to South Dakota — and found a place in Cedar Village. A few years later, we settled in Old Si View. That picture (in our gallery) I included of Mt. Si was shot from our mailbox.” (Featured Image)

Drawn in by the affordability that eluded them in larger cities, they discovered a community rich in charm and familiarity. Once the Shipleys got settled, there was no thought of leaving. When they retired, they considered other places but said there was no place better than this. Says Ken, “We are North Benders.”

Ken takes most of his shots in the valley, but one of his favorite things is to pick a direction, drive for a couple of hours and see what’s there that day. He can get from the ocean to the plains with mountains, rivers, valleys, cities, towns, and all the gorgeousness in between. Ken has lived in the PNW for 35 years, and every day, he’s seen something that makes him gasp a little bit at the beauty. He says it makes picture-taking easy.

As retirement dovetailed with the solitude of the pandemic, Shipley found solace in his photography. His mission transcended personal enjoyment: it became about documenting and contributing to the valley community—a gesture of giving back to the place that had given him so much.