Adam Perez is an acclaimed photographer, filmmaker, and educator from California's Central Valley whose work explores identity, collective memory, and the lives of communities too often overlooked. As a first-generation, queer son of Mexican immigrants, Perez has spent more than two decades documenting the region he calls home, creating photographs and films that examine migration, labor, resilience, and wisdom.

Raised in a farmworker family, Perez's practice is rooted in long-term relationships with the people and places he photographs. His work seeks to build a living archive of the Central Valley while challenging dominant narratives about rural America. Through photography, film, public art, and community-centered storytelling, he amplifies voices that have historically been excluded from the cultural record.

Perez is the founder of Tierra Mia, a community-built arts festival honoring farmworker communities, and his ongoing project, Of the Fields, is a collaborative project with migrant farmworkers supported by the CatchLight Global Fellowship. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, TIME Magazine, CNN Films, and other national and international publications. He is a recipient of numerous honors, including a CatchLight Global Fellowship, a Constellations Fellowship, and was named an Emerson Collective Fellow in 2021.

He’s currently collaborating with visual editor, Virginia Lozano, on Valley of the Forgotten, Valle de los Olvidados, a prayer book that combines documentary photography with handwritten postcards, prayers, and stories from immigrant farmworker communities. The project explores how prayer functions not only as a religious act but also as a form of care, deep reflection, and community solidarity.