Introduction

The challenge of ‘visualizing globalization’ requires analytical frames that engage the local‐global dynamic as well as a variety of visual methods. The article reflects on two uses of photography in a cross‐border research project tracing the journey of a tomato from the Mexican field to the Canadian fast food restaurant, and the role of women workers within the various stages of continental food production, distribution, and consumption. To examine globalization from above, the ubiquity of corporate advertising images is exploited, and their messages deconstructed and reconstructed to expose the production processes behind the commodities being promoted. Globalization from below is explored through photo‐stories of the daily lives of Mexican women agricultural workers as food producers at work and at home; Teresa's story illustrates how subsistence and market economies co‐exist and how family economies remain the survival and social base for Mexican peasants. The juxtaposition of two classic forms of image production—social documentary and corporate advertising photography—raises questions about the social construction of reality and creates new kinds of visual dialogues offering multi‐layered interpretations of the local‐global nexus.