“Twenty years [later], the work still stands today,” Velasco told Art & Object in a recent interview. “I witnessed this [while] working with my father as a land surveyor assistant. He has taken me to fringes of society that [have] been unseen and unheard [in] the San Joaquin Valley of California. This was less than a year ago.”

In 104 Degrees, an image taken in 1998, Velasco chose to photograph a farm worker in the early afternoon, trading a wide value range for predominant highlights to convey the intense sunlight and heat during the late summer harvest. Velasco stepped rather uneasily in front of the tractor to take this image, shares Ledesma.

In Eric, Velasco depicts the titular youth sitting on a tractor in dappled light. Ledesma cites this work and its community-focused narrative as particularly poignant. Eric’s grandfather — the only Black tobacco farmer in Stovall, NC — had just passed away, so locals were helping Eric’s family cure and farm tobacco. After Velasco photographed the laborers during lunch, they encouraged him to continue while they worked, later asking Velasco how much they owed him for his photographs. “There was a great amount of humility,” said Velasco.

Velasco conjures evocative narratives with certain compositions. In an untitled work from 1999 taken on the same day as Eric, a stern adolescent sits inside a doorway, working with tobacco leaves. The white-hot exterior light spills around the young laborer and into the barn, illuminating the boot-printed texture of the dirt floor before gradually dissipating into the pitch-black interior in dramatic contrast reminiscent of a Caravaggio painting.