A collection of Latinx photography from the US-Mexico border that highlights the complexity and struggle of Latinx borderland communities facing widespread scare tactics.
The US-Mexico border has experienced significant changes over the past sixty years, becoming more industrialized, urbanized, and militarized, especially after 9/11 and the War on Terror. Mainstream and conservative news coverage often reinforces or worsens these developments, portraying the border as out of control and using derogatory terms for migrants, which fuels xenophobic attitudes.
A refutation of this reductive and dehumanizing narrative, this presentation of Latinx photography offers more nuanced portrayals of life in the borderlands. Ranging from the 1970s to the 2020s, images by Louis Carlos Bernal, Graciela Iturbide, and Laura Aguilar, as well as emerging artists such as Ada Trillo, Guadalupe Rosales, and Miguel Fernández de Castro display alternative photographic vocabularies regarding place, identity, and race. With subject matter spanning from intimate domestic portraits and youth counterculture to border crossings and clashes involving Border Patrol, this richly illustrated volume also features scholarly essays and new work by fronteriza poet Natalie Scenters-Zapico, providing a timely new perspective on life in this fraught and misunderstood region.
Distributed for The Cleveland Museum of Art
