Views from the Borderlands
5 black and white photographs
40 x 40 inches
2002

The black and white, large format photographs in views from the borderland (2002) address the traffic of migrants in the northern desert of Mexico. The projection of cityscapes from New York - a common destination for illegal Mexican workers - on the rocky and arid terrain of the Mexican desert produces images of hybrid territories. The projections were photographed at night, the recommended time for illegally crossing into the U.S. The final photographs were produced in black and white to accentuate the homogenizing quality of the medium and to allow for the images of the city to blend seamlessly with the landscape. The scale of the objects in the image is disorienting for the viewer, as the city is miniaturized and almost engulfed by the desert. The migrant is absent from these images, replaced by the viewer who is confronted with conflated images of point of origin and an ultimate locality as if the dreamed destinations were appearing miraculously to the dehydrated, delusional traveler. On the end, the image of crossing is constructing by eliminating the crosser and the crossed terrain, making the passage impossible as the end and beginning points collapse into an unmappable location pointing to the in betweens that will continuously haunt the migrant even if he or she manage to arrive to the desired new land.

text about this project