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About this photograph

Creator
Margery H. Freeman
Date created
1986
Location
Ubud, Bali, Indonesia
License
This photograph copyright ©2007. Terms of use

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Farmer in pink jacket, shorts, and conical hat picks rice seedlings to transplant

Size: 686×1024

A farmer in a pink jacket, shorts, and a conical palm leaf hat picks rice seedlings for transplant into a flooded field.

Stepping forward on his bent left leg, the man folds flexibly at the waist reaching with his right arm to retrieve a bunch of green rice seedlings from the wet earth. Water pools on the soil nearby and the man’s extremities and clothes carry traces of the soil in which he works. The man’s dark shadow is visible behind him in the mud.

Bali is one of the few areas in Southeast Asia where men alone are assigned the job of transplanting rice. This task is usually done by couples or only by women, who are symbolically associated with control over grain and human fertility.