Click on photo for larger image.

Artist's Statement

Apple picking season starts at the end of August and lasts until the end of October. Each year, hundreds of Jamaican farmers travel to Maine to work for the season, to make a better living for their families back home. I photographed them in 2008, and I was amazed by these very same hands that help them survive... each of them tells a story about their hard work, their endless days, and also about their pride in what they do. Each line in those hands looked like a beautifully written poem, and those poems make the most precious book I have ever read.

Judge's Comment

As a child, I used to help with the harvest at my grandparent's citrus farm. Eleonora Ronconi's photograph, "Story Tellers," carries me right back to that experience. Everything works together in this image: the unorthodox wide horizontal framing, the earthiness of the color, the sense of grit and rough textures, those marvelous hands looming right out at us, offering the apples.

- David Hibbard