This project shoots portraits of three farmers of Kona Coffee, the world's most expensive and most sought after coffee. Kona coffee comes from approximately 600 small 6 acre family farms, one of the last vestiges of the traditional american family farm which allowed farmers to be independent both financial and politically and was once considered the bedrock of the republican form of government. Family farms were seen as the foundation of a republican form of government because family farmers were not as prone to be blackmailed by the whims of the market and their masters.
Tara Cronin is an artist working in various mediums focusing on alternative photographic methods, works on paper, installation and book-arts. She has pursued an art career that has both helped her solve problems in her own internal space as well as in the space she finds herself situated externally. Tara received a BA in Writing from New School University, and an MFA in Photography from Bard College and the ICP-Bard Program, and has Twice-earned the ICP Director’s Fellowship Award. During her graduate and post-graduate work, Tara explored this interface between the material and the individual
