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caveartfair · 6 years ago

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10 Photographers Who Have Told the Story of the U.S.–Mexico Border

The histories of borders have long interested photographer Tomas van Houtryve. “If you’re born on one side or the other, that can decide how prosperous and free you are,” he said. But the line itself can be arbitrary; borders have been decided by any number of reasons, he continued. “With the passage of time, people start to see them as permanent.”

The origins of the U.S.–Mexico border trace back to President James K. Polk’s “Manifest Destiny”—which sent American troops into Mexico to expand the U.S.’s territory to the western coast—as well as the desire among Southern Americans for more slave states. The Mexican–American War ensued, and at its close in 1848, the border was hotly disputed by the two countries. The following year, after an agreement had been reached, the American survey team that set out to plot its path nearly died due to to the unforgiving climate and terrain.

Today, the impact of the border on both countries is boundless. The immigration debate has reached a fever pitch under the administration of U.S. President Donald J. Trump, who enacted a harsh zero-tolerance deportation policy this spring, and continues to seek funding for a complete border wall.

But the 2,000-mile border remains untameable. In some sections, it is marked by thick metal barriers, but it also crosses over rivers and canyons. When photographer Benjamin Rasmussen visited the border in Texas, he was struck by how “brutal” the land is. He, van Houtryve, and countless other photographers have traveled to the great dividing line to document the people crossing and patrolling it, the towns that sit upon it, and beyond. Below, we share the work of 10 such photographers, who have explored this territory from the 1930s to the present.

Tomas van Houtryve

Year: 2018

A wave is split by fencing along the Mexico-U.S. border at Tijuana, Baja California and Imperial Beach, California. From Tomas van Houtryve’s series “Implied Lines,” 2018. ©Tomas van Houtryve. Courtesy of

From high in the air in California, looking down, the impression that the U.S.–Mexico border makes depends on the light, according to Belgian photographer Tomas van Houtryve. The metal wall can be seen as a line cast by its own shadow. If it’s cloudy, it gets lost between the surrounding parking lots, freeways, and rivers—“it almost disappears because it’s so thin,” van Houtryve described. But when the sun is low, “it casts this very long shadow.”

Van Houtryve focused on how the border divides the land in his drone series “Implied Lines,” which was supported by a CatchLight fellowship and published in Time magazine this past May.

Van Houtryve, who was raised in California, has been shooting with drones since 2013, using a birds-eye view to evoke the idea of surveillance. His images, in high-contrast black and white, render texture and form like a sculptural frieze.

Street art and graffiti are seen near the fence on the Mexico-U.S. border in Nogales, Sonora and Arizona. From Tomas van Houtryve’s series “Implied Lines,” 2018. ©Tomas van Houtryve. Courtesy of the artist.

An individual wearing a cowboy hat walks near a railway gate on the Mexico-U.S. border in Nogales, Sonora and Arizona. From Tomas van Houtryve’s series “Implied Lines,” 2018. ©Tomas van Houtryve. Courtesy of the artist.

Shadows cast by sensors and cameras at the port of entry on the Mexico-U.S. border in San Luis Rio Colorado, Sonora and Arizona. From Tomas van Houtryve’s series “Implied Lines,” 2018. ©Tomas van Houtryve. Courtesy of the artist.

A U.S. Border Patrol agent riding a quad is seen along the Mexico-U.S. border at Imperial Beach, California and Tijuana, Baja California. From Tomas van Houtryve’s series “Implied Lines,” 2018. ©Tomas van Houtryve. Courtesy of the artist.

Lanes of cars line up at the Mexico-U.S. border at the port of entry at San Ysidro, California and Tijuana, Baja California. The port is the largest land border crossing point in the world. From Tomas van Houtryve’s series “Implied Lines,” 2018. ©Tomas van Houtryve. Courtesy of the artist.

From above, he said, the border loses its sense of permanence—especially to a drone, which can unwittingly drift over it. “The wall’s physicality becomes completely irrelevant to the drone,” van Houtryve explained. “This very important line suddenly becomes a very virtual line once you’re in the air.”

At its farthest western tip, in San Diego, the border cuts into the ocean. Van Houtryve filmed a short video from above the wall’s end, entitled Divided (2018), which seems almost meditative. “You see the waves coming across the Pacific, and they form these really beautiful very long lines,” he said. At the end of their journey, the waves hit the wall and break in two. “There was something very symbolic there in the difference between the slow, geological [movement] of the waves and the impermanent line put up by humans,” he mused, “that seems a little absurd.”

Griselda San Martin

Years: 2015–present

A young man speaks to his family member through the border fence at Friendship Park, a meeting place on the border between Tijuana, Mexico and San Diego, California. For many families separated by immigration status, it is the only way that they can see their loved ones in person. Photo by Griselda San Martin from her series “The Wall.”Courtesy of the artist.

The division caused by the U.S.–Mexico border is perhaps most apparent at its western end, on a half-acre of land named “Friendship Park.” Here, separated loved ones visit each other through the metal fencing. On the San Diego side, it’s reminiscent of prison: Visits are regulated to a few hours per day on weekends, 10 people at a time, on a first-come, first-served basis, and always monitored by border patrol. The Tijuana side, however, is strikingly different.

“It’s very lively, and there’s a lot of music and a lot of color….There are people selling food, people going to the beach,” described Griselda San Martin, a Spanish-born, New York–based photographer who has been visiting the Mexican side of Friendship Park since 2015. The wall itself is lively, too—stretches of it have been covered with colorful murals.

Pastor Jonathan and wife Gladys at their wedding photoshoot in front of the the U.S.-Mexico border fence in Tijuana, Mexico. The border is a symbolic place for Ibarra and Lopez, who both grew up in California but now live in Tijuana separated from their whole family. Photo by Griselda San Martin from the series “The Wall.” Courtesy of the artist.

Families separated by immigration status gather on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border fence at Friendship Park in Tijuana, Mexico. Friendship Park is the only federally established binational meeting place along the 2,000-mile border dividing the United States and Mexico. On the U.S. side, the area for visitation is only open a few hours on Saturday and Sunday and the Border Patrol is always vigilant. Photo by Griselda San Martin from the series “The Wall.” Courtesy of the artist.

Alejandra Vallejo visits her husband Daniel Armendariz at the border wall in Tijuana. At the moment this photo was taken, the couple had been meeting at the border every Saturday and Sunday for the previous two months. Armendariz cannot leave the United States because he is on probation and Alejandra does not have the documents to legally cross the border into the United States. Photo by Griselda San Martin from the series “The Wall.” Courtesy of the artist.

Deported musician José Marquez visits his daughter Susanna and 14-year-old grandson Johnny who are both on the U.S. side of the fence. José and his daughter have been separated by the border wall for 15 years, since he was deported from the United States after living and working in San Diego for almost two decades. Once a month, they see each other through the metallic fence at Friendship Park. Photo by Griselda San Martin from the series “The Wall.” Courtesy of the artist.

The Salgado family poses for a portrait. On the other side of the border fence (in the U.S.) Cesar and his niece Giselle visit with several family members (in Tijuana). On the day this photo was taken, Cesar saw his daughter (third from right) for the first time in 14 years, only it was through the beams of the border wall.Photo by Griselda San Martin from the series “The Wall.” Courtesy of the artist.

Pastor Guillermo Navarrete of the Methodist Church of Mexico at the border fence during the weekly meeting of the Border Church in Tijuana, Mexico. The steel mesh in this area is so tightly woven that people can barely touch fingertips. Photo by Griselda San Martin from the series “The Wall.” Courtesy of the artist.

Two women talk through the border fence at Friendship park on a sunny summer day. It is not unusual to see people sitting on folding chairs during the time the park is open, which is only a few hours on Saturday and Sunday. Photo by Griselda San Martin from the series “The Wall.” Courtesy of the artist.

But no amount of paint can disguise what the barrier represents. San Martin’s subjects, many of whom show up every weekend, have called the meetings with their loved ones “bittersweet.” Up close, they can see—but not touch—their family members. From farther away, San Martin’s photographs show only the shadows of those on the U.S. side, creating unsettling images.

When San Martin first visited Friendship Park, she was shocked by it. She took the first photo of the series then, too—of a man between a thatch of palm fronds, speaking to family members through the painted wall. Since then, she has witnessed family reunions, Mother’s Day visits, quinceañeras, and weddings in Friendship Park. Her images are for her subjects, as well, such as a pastor and his wife who asked her to take their wedding photos in front of the wall; they had been deported, and their families—including their children—remained in the U.S.

Recently, visiting the American side has become harder, with less space and more regulation, according to San Martin. But even without the stricter rules, the wall itself is an insurmountable divider. “The separation is so physical, you can touch it,” she said.

Dorothea Lange

Years: 1937–1938

Dorothea Lange, Crossing the international bridge between Juarez, Mexico and El Paso, Texas 1937. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Dorothea Lange, Wife of a Mexican sharecropper near Bryan, Texas, 1938. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Just 13 years after the United States Border Patrol was established as a federal agency in 1924, Dorothea Lange—who is widely considered to be the pioneer of documentary photography—traveled to El Paso, Texas, to photograph the border and those who were crossing it.

Lange is best known for the dignity she imbued in her images of Depression-era agricultural workers, as seen in her most famous photograph, Migrant Mother (1936), taken in Nipomo Valley, California. Her greater oeuvre was marked by the same sense of social justice. Lange engaged her subjects—who ranged from interned Japanese families to Oklahoma drought refugees—and sought their stories, taking extensive notes. (As NPR reported, Lange was irate when her full captions were not published with her images.)

At the border, Lange photographed daily activities—inspectors handling packages; officials checking a freight train for smuggled passengers; citizens passing through turnstiles—but she also took portraits. In one striking image, a Mexican family, consisting of four women and a young boy, sits at an immigration station, waiting to enter the United States, their gazes direct.

Dorothea Lange, Mexicans entering the United States. United States immigration station, El Paso, Texas, 1938. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Dorothea Lange, Mexican mother in California. “Sometimes I tell my children that I would like to go to Mexico, but they tell me ‘We don't want to go, we belong here,’” 1935. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Dorothea Lange, Mexican cotton picker. Southern San Joaquin Valley, California, 1936. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Dorothea Lange, Mexicans picking cantaloupes one mile north of the Mexican border. Imperial Valley, Califoria. 6:00 a.m. This is highly skilled labor, 1937. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Dorothea Lange, Sign at bridge between Juarez, Mexico and El Paso, Texas, 1937. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Dorothea Lange, Mexican laborer's house and 1500 acre cantaloupe ranch adjacent to Mexican border. Imperial Valley, California, 1938. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Dorothea Lange, Inspecting a freight train from Mexico for smuggled immigrants. El Paso, Texas, 1938. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Dorothea Lange, Mexicans entering the United States. United States immigration station, El Paso, Texas, 1938. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Around the same time, in the late 1930s, Lange also took an interest in Mexican agricultural workers and migrants across the Southwest. She traveled to California’s Imperial Valley, documenting workers who lived in slumlike conditions to keep America’s farms running. There, and in Arizona, she continued to ask people about their stories.

While sitting for Lange in California, a Mexican mother holding her child told the photographer: “Sometimes I tell my children that I would like to go to Mexico, but they tell me ‘We don’t want to go, we belong here,’” Lange reported in her caption. She not only established a visual standard for documentary work, but ethical considerations, as well—that photographers owe it to their subjects to not just look, but listen.

Richard Misrach

Years: 2004–2015

Richard Misrach, Wall, east of Nogales, Arizona, 2015, from Border Cantos (Aperture, 2016). © Richard Misrach. Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, Pace/MacGill Gallery, and Marc Selwyn Fine Art.

For 40 years, the artist Richard Misrach has traveled in a camper for weeks at a time in the American desert, “just to see what I can discover,” he explained. While seeking compositions that reflect American politics or culture, he avoids well-known areas. So, until 2004, he never considered the U.S.–Mexico border as a subject.

That changed when he came across a blue barrel full of water jugs, marked by a flag in the desert near Ocotillo, California. He learned that humanitarian groups left these water stations for migrants traveling through the treacherous heat.

Misrach photographed the water stations, but it wasn’t until 2009 that he began paying closer attention to the militarizing border wall, which had increasing construction, towers, and patrol. He began traveling along the border; across its length, he noticed a “crude method” of tracking migrants, where agents would drag flat tires behind their vehicles, smoothing out the ground to make any passing footsteps more visible. He photographed the discarded tires, treating them like sculptures; those images would become his first border series, or “canto.”

Richard Misrach, Wall, near Brownsville, Texas, 2013, from Border Cantos (Aperture, 2016). © Richard Misrach. Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, Pace/MacGill Gallery, and Marc Selwyn Fine Art.

Richard Misrach, Fuck U.S.A., Nogales, Arizona, 2013, from Border Cantos (Aperture, 2016). © Richard Misrach. Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, Pace/MacGill Gallery, and Marc Selwyn Fine Art.

Richard Misrach, Tire drags used along the border from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, 2013–15, from Border Cantos (Aperture, 2016).© Richard Misrach. Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, Pace/MacGill Gallery, and Marc Selwyn Fine Art.

Richard Misrach, Border Patrol target range, Boca Chica Highway, near Gulf of Mexico, Texas, 2013, from Border Cantos (Aperture, 2016). © Richard Misrach. Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, Pace/MacGill Gallery, and Marc Selwyn Fine Art.

Richard Misrach, Home using border fence as a fourth wall in Colonia Libertad, Tijuana, Mexico, 2014, from Border Cantos (Aperture, 2016). © Richard Misrach. Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, Pace/MacGill Gallery, and Marc Selwyn Fine Art.

Richard Misrach, Surveillance blimp, Marfa, Texas, 2013, from Border Cantos (Aperture, 2016). © Richard Misrach. Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, Pace/MacGill Gallery, and Marc Selwyn Fine Art.

Richard Misrach, Effigy #2, near Jacumba, California, 2009, from Border Cantos (Aperture, 2016). © Richard Misrach. Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, Pace/MacGill Gallery, and Marc Selwyn Fine Art.

Misrach also began photographing sections of the border wall, as well as items like clothing, backpacks, and water bottles, collecting those that interested him. They would come in handy later, in 2012, when he befriended composer and sculptor Guillermo Galindo, who was making instruments out of objects left behind by migrants. They began a collaboration that would lead to the book Border Cantos (2016), featuring Misrach’s photos and Galindo’s instruments; the book has been accompanied by international exhibitions and musical performances.

Though the heated debate over a full border wall has caused sustained interest in Misrach’s work, Border Cantos was completed before Donald Trump first lit the match. Having seen the entirety of the border, Misrach says there are too many natural barriers for a wall to be completed end to end. “Building a wall is a political—and very expensive—symbol,” he said.

While his work differs from photojournalism, Misrach hopes to create a timeless set of images to describe the border and the artifacts of those who crossed it. “I go to great lengths to make beautiful pictures of difficult subjects,” he noted.

Ken Light

Years: 1983–1987

Brown Field Station in San Ysidro. Photo by Ken Light/Contact Press Images. © Ken Light.

In the 1980s, photojournalist Ken Light returned to the U.S.–Mexico border again and again to accompany night patrol as they found and apprehended migrants. Border crossings had been steadily increasing since the ’70s, topping 1 million yearly apprehensions the following decade. Light, who is based in California, had seen undocumented workers hiding out in the fields as far north as the State of Washington while working on a monograph about agriculture. He decided to include images showing the long and arduous journey migrants were undertaking.

Light later received permission to do a series of ride-alongs at the Tijuana–San Ysidro border. Due to the lack of activity during the day, he began going out with the patrol at night, from 4 p.m. to 7 a.m. He was given a level of access that would be hard—if not impossible—to get today, but it came at a cost. On the first day, a supervisor began hitting a man that he had apprehended; Light did not photograph the scene. “I realized if I took that picture, that would be the last day that I ever photographed [there],” he recalled.

San Ysidro, June 2, 1985. Photo by Ken Light/Contact Press Images. © Ken Light. Courtesy of the artist.

San Ysidro, March 29, 1986. Photo by Ken Light/Contact Press Images. © Ken Light. Courtesy of the artist.

Word spread that he could be trusted, and for years, he worked at the border without censorship. He continued to photograph in the pitch dark with his Hasselblad camera and Vivitar flash, unable to see in front of him until the flash went off. To help give a sense of “why these people were coming and what they were leaving behind,” he expanded the project, photographing people from Mexico up into California’s Central Valley. That body of work became his 1988 book To the Promised Land.

Today, Light is revisiting his night work, putting together a new edit with around 70 unseen photos, several of which recently published in the Washington Post. He was motivated by the “horrible” commentary from Trump about undocumented immigrants that came to “a rolling boil” during the 2016 election. “I thought, ‘I should go back and look at that work. This is again going to be a big issue,’” he recalled. But, this time, he found that access was restricted. “It’s really curated now, I think, by immigration,” he said. “They are much more conscious now about the effects a photograph might have in terms of the public conversation.”

Kirsten Luce

Year: 2014

Fresh migrant footprints through a dried up pond in Mexico just south of Mission, Texas, near the Rio Grande River. Photo by Kfrom the series “As Above So Below,” 2014–2015. Courtesy of the artist.

In the summer of 2014, the town of McAllen, Texas, was thrust into the news cycle as women and children fleeing violence in Central America poured over the U.S.–Mexico border. They crossed the Rio Grande in groups of hundreds, overwhelming border security and pushing detention centers past their capacity.

Kirsten Luce, a New York–based photographer, knew the political structure of McAllen intimately, having worked for three years at the town’s daily newspaper, The Monitor, at the beginning of her career. She appealed to local authorities to allow her to ride in helicopters with them, in order to survey their efforts from above. “I wanted to document this unprecedented surge in resources that was state, local, and federal,” she said.

Border Patrol agents search for the driver of a vehicle bailout north of La Joya, Texas. When a vehicle carrying drugs or migrants is stopped by police in the U.S., the occupants often flee into the brush and the agents must search for them. This is called a vehicle bailout and they are particularly dangerous as panicked migrants get lost in the brush and can die from the heat. Photo by Kirsten Luce from the series “As Above So Below,” 2014–2015. Courtesy of the artist.

A suspected migrant runs back to Miguel Aleman, Mexico after being pursued by agents near Roma, Texas. This is called a “turnback.” Border Patrol and other law enforcement cannot pursue migrants or smugglers back into Mexico but act as a deterrent. Photo by Kirsten Luce from the series “As Above So Below,” 2014–2015. Courtesy of the artist.

Migrants hide on the edge of sand dunes in Kennedy County, Texas, as they are surrounded by Border Patrol Agents. These migrants were avoiding the interior checkpoint located in Sarita, Texas, some 70 miles north of the actual border. Photo by Kirsten Luce from the series “As Above So Below,” 2014–2015.

Luce took multiple helicopter rides daily, determined to observe as much as possible. She ended up with two series: The first, published by Bloomberg Businessweek, was shot around the Rio Grande River; the second, published by Time, was shot 70 miles north, around a checkpoint in Brooks County. “In terms of the risk to the migrants, it’s the most dangerous place,” Luce said of the area. To avoid the checkpoint, those traveling must do so on foot, in treacherous heat, and in disorienting brushland.

The helicopters Luce took flew low to the ground, intended for close pursuit, so she was able to observe not just the migrants, but the physical markers agents looked for, as well, such as footprints in the dirt and disruptions in the grass.

She could also see the full scope of border patrol’s apprehension efforts—agents on horses, in ATVs, in SUVs, and with tracking dogs. “From the air, it was very clear to me the amount of money that was being spent per hour per day [on] this kind of abstract idea of securing a border,” she noted. “The task of trying to locate somebody sneaking into the country just seems sort of Herculean from the air. You can get a sense of how impossible the task is.”

Alex Webb

Years: 1975–2001

USA. San Ysidro, Ca. Mexican children playing with kite on the U.S. side of the border. (They are in the U.S. illegally.) The houses below them are in Tijuana, Mexico, where they live. Photo by Alex Webb. © Alex Webb/Magnum Photos. Courtesy of Magnum Photos

Alex Webb first photographed the U.S.–Mexico border in 1975, taking black-and-white photos of the border towns in Mexico and Texas over the next three years. He switched to color in 1979, and would continue photographing through the turn of the millenium, publishing the book Crossings in 2003. Webb was present as the number of the migrants ballooned in the 1980s and exploded during the United States’s economic boom in the ’90s; he was fascinated by the stretch of land that seemed to stand apart from the two countries.

Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas. MEXICO., 1996. Alex Webb Magnum Photos

Mexicali, B.C. 1995. Hanging out at International Point of Entry. Photo by Alex Webb. © Alex Webb/Magnum Photos. Courtesy of Magnum Photos.

MEXICO. Playa de Tijuana. 1995. At the border fence. Photo by Alex Webb. © Alex Webb/Magnum Photos. Courtesy of Magnum Photos.

MEXICO. Tijuana. Shadows of Mexicans lined up to get border crossing cards. 1979. Photo by Alex Webb. © Alex Webb/Magnum Photos. Courtesy of Magnum Photos.

“Rather rapidly, my work began to expand into the whole feel of the border—what is this strange world that is neither the U.S. nor Mexico? There’s a perpetual sense of transience: everyone is always trying to go to the other side,” he commented in a feature by Magnum Photos. While the border fence does appear in his work, Webb also spent time on the streets, in nightclubs and bars, and on the outskirts of border towns. Two years ago, he echoed his thoughts, describing the border territory “as a kind of third country…a place with its own rules, its own traditions.”

Webb continued to photograph Mexico for another photo book, La Calle, in 2016. His vision of the country, in shadowy saturation, would also inspire the cinematography of the 2015 film Sicario, a crime-thriller about the escalating drug war, set around the border.

Guillermo Arias

Year: 2018

Central American migrants traveling in the 'Migrant Via Crucis' queue outside the Padre Chava's kitchen soup for breakfast and legal counseling, in Tijuana, Baja California State, Mexico, on April 27, 2018. Photo by Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images.

In April, a caravan of approximately 1,200 migrants traveling from Central America to the U.S. caught the ire of President Trump. Announcing that he would send troops to “guard” the border, the caravan was used as a symbol of threat to the country. The migrants “thought they were just going to walk right through Mexico and right through the border,” he claimed.

But that wasn’t an accurate portrayal. The annual caravans, called the “Migrant Via Crucis,” organized by the advocacy group People Without Borders, are not for illegal immigration, but for those seeking asylum—including many families escaping violence in their home countries. Guillermo Arias, a photojournalist with Agence France Presse who is based out of Tijuana and has been covering the border since 2004, has photographed three caravans.

The journey for the asylum-seekers is arduous; they travel on foot, by freight train, and by bus. “They finally arrive to the border after days and, in some cases, months of traveling through very dangerous places, pursued by authorities and gangs; [they are] victims of all kinds of abuse,” he explained. “The caravan [was] born out of the necessity [for] security—security they found traveling as a group.” (However, he added, the attention from Trump afforded safe passage for this year’s caravanbecause of the presence of journalists and activists.)

Central American migrants traveling in the 'Migrant Via Crucis' caravan arrive at Juventud 2000 shelter in Tijuana, Baja California state,Mexico, on April 24, 2018.Photo by Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images. Photo by Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images.

Honduran Esmeralda Rivera rests at the Hotel Migrante shelter in Mexicali, Mexico, on April 24, 2018, after arriving with other Central American migrants taking part in the 'Migrant Via Crucis' caravan. Photo by Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images.

Elsa (R), a Central American migrant during the 'Migrant Via Crucis' caravan, combs her daughter Adriana outside their tent at Juventud 2000 shelter in Tijuana, Mexico on April 17, 2018. Photo by Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images.

Central American migrants travelling in the 'Migrant Via Crucis' caravan sleep outside 'El Chaparral' port of entry to US while waiting to be received by US authorities, in Tijuana, Baja California State, Mexico on April 30, 2018. Photo by Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images.

Many do not complete the journey, and when they do reach their destination, even more will be turned away. “Not because they don’t deserve it, so to speak,” Arias said. “[It’s] simply because most of them don’t have the ‘evidence’ to support their cases.”

Arias’s photographs of this year’s caravan show families as they disembark from the buses, rest in shelters, receive legal counseling, and then start the long wait to surrender themselves to U.S. officials at the port of entry. As a photojournalist, Arias tries to take an objective view with his images. “Most of the border stories are already charged with high levels of emotion, political tension, and human tragedy, so I believe it is fundamental not only for me, but for all photojournalists covering these issues, not to over-dramatize the events we photograph,” he explained.

But one fact that he thinks is often misunderstood in American media coverage is the motivation of people trying to migrate north. It’s not the search for work, but the fear of violence from the cartel, whose members make their money off of the American public, and use guns smuggled across the border. Today, “most Mexicans migrating to the U.S. do it mainly based on fear,” he said. “These people are not in pursuit of the American Dream; they just want some peace in their lives.”

Benjamin Rasmussen

Year: 2018

An Anduril surveillance tower is tested on the border in southwestern Texas. Photo by Benjamin Rasmussen. © Benjamin Rasmussen. Courtesy of the artist.

This past April, Denver-based photographer Benjamin Rasmussen received an assignment from Wired to photograph a story about a national-defense tech start-up called Anduril. The company is something of a black sheep in Silicon Valley, due to its founder’s vocal support of the Trump administration (Palmer Luckey, who also founded VR company Oculus) and its tech, which gives border patrol a powerful method to survey the area. It uses VR and surveillance tools, combined with an AI algorithm, to pinpoint people from a great distance. A sample of Anduril’s tech was being installed at the border, and the company was in talks with the U.S. government to lease it (that discussion is still ongoing).

Rasmussen didn’t want to use the typical visual language of tech stories, which have images that are “very bright, and poppy, and kind of saturated,” he noted. “You cannot allow people to think about the technology without thinking about the implications of where and how it’s used.” Instead, he pitched to his editor the idea of using the visual language of the border—“It’s kind of harsh; it’s a little bit more empty,” he explained.

Brian Schimpf, co-founder and CEO of Anduril, walks past a tower testing site in Chino Hills, CA. Photo by Benjamin Rasmussen. © Benjamin Rasmussen. Courtesy of the artist.

An Anduril surveillance tower is tested on the border in southwestern Texas. Photo by Benjamin Rasmussen. © Benjamin Rasmussen. Courtesy of the artist.

Palmer Lucky, co-founder of Anduril, tests out the VR capabilities of the tower’s camera in Chino Hills, CA. Photo by Benjamin Rasmussen. © Benjamin Rasmussen. Courtesy of the artist.

Paths are seen worn in the side of a cliff in southwestern Texas from frequent usage by migrants and smugglers moving across the Mexican border. Photo by Benjamin Rasmussen. © Benjamin Rasmussen. Courtesy of the artist.

An Anduril surveillance tower is tested on the border in southwestern Texas. Photo by Benjamin Rasmussen. © Benjamin Rasmussen. Courtesy of the artist.

Benjamin Rasmussen and his team photographed by the Andruil tower. Photo by Benjamin Rasmussen. Photos © Benjamin Rasmussen. Courtesy of the artist.

The border had been of interest to Rasmussen for some time—specifically, the idea that U.S. citizens’ rights do not extend all the way to the dividing line. At the border, “you don’t have the same right to privacy; you don’t have the same right [against] unreasonable search and seizures,” he said. Anduril’s technology seemed to represent the worst of that, seemingly providing border patrol with a powerful new tool that could be used to violate people’s rights. Further, it allowed an algorithm to decide “what is and what isn’t human,” thus identifying the likelihood of a subject being an animal, object, or person.

While at the border, Rasmussen found that he had incorrectly assumed that all of Anduril employees fell on the red side of the political aisle. Many of them, aside from Luckey, were not. An executive that Rasmussen spent time with explained that the technology’s precision would help border patrol make better decisions as to who to apprehend.

Still, Rasmussen was not at ease. “To me, that doesn’t change the moral complexity of creating a very powerful tool that’s going be in the hands of people who, if you look historically, I think have oftentimes tended to use [their power] very abusively,” he said.

John Moore

Years: 2008–present

A man looks through the U.S.-Mexico border fence into the United States on September 25, 2016 in Tijuana, Mexico. Photo by John Moore/Getty Images. From Undocumented by John Moore, published by powerHouse Books.

You would be hard-pressed to find a U.S. citizen who didn’t see the photograph this past June of the young Honduran girl crying at the border. The image became a symbol of the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy, enacted in April, which separated children from parents and caused a spike in the number of children housed in detention centers while their parents awaited trial.

The photographer, John Moore, wasn’t present by chance. The Pulitzer Prize–winning photojournalist, who is on staff with Getty Images, has been focusing on immigration stories in Central and North America since 2008, following 17 years of international postings. Moore said he saw the immigration crisis with “fresh eyes,” and began a body of work in earnest in 2010 after SB 1070, the sweeping anti-immigration law, passed in Arizona. This year, Moore published a book, Undocumented: Immigration and the Militarization of the United States–Mexico Border, which combines several series illustrating border security, deportations, ICE raids, and immigrant communities in both countries.

Families attend a memorial service for two boys who were kidnapped and killed on February 14, 2017 in San Juan Sacatepequez, Guatemala. Photo by John Moore/Getty Images. From Undocumented by John Moore, published by powerHouse Books.

A group of young men walk along the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexico border fence in a remote area of the Sonoran Desert on December 9, 2010 in the Tohono O'odham Reservation, Arizona. Photo by John Moore/Getty Images. From Undocumented by John Moore, published by powerHouse Books.

A boy from Honduras watches a movie at a detention facility run by the U.S. Border Patrol on September 8, 2014 in McAllen, Texas. Photo by John Moore/Getty Images. From Undocumented by John Moore, published by powerHouse Books.

A Honduran mother holds her two-year-old daughter while being detained by U.S. Border Patrol agents near the U.S.-Mexico border on June 12, 2018 in McAllen, Texas. Photo by John Moore/Getty Images. From Undocumented by John Moore, published by powerHouse Books.

Undocumented immigrants comfort each other after being caught by Border Patrol agents near the U.S.-Mexico border on April 13, 2016 in Weslaco, Texas. Photo by John Moore/Getty Images. From Undocumented by John Moore, published by powerHouse Books.

U.S. Border Patrol agent Sal De Leon stands near a section of the U.S.- Mexico border fence while stopping on patrol on April 10, 2013 in La Joya, Texas. Photo by John Moore/Getty Images. From Undocumented by John Moore, published by powerHouse Books.

Mexican migrant workers harvest organic parsley at Grant Family Farms on October 11, 2011 in Wellington, Colorado. Photo by John Moore/Getty Images. From Undocumented by John Moore, published by powerHouse Books.

“I think by showing so many sides of the story in the comprehensive way, I’ve attempted to humanize the issue as much as possible,” Moore said. “Because when all sides see the other as human beings, it’s easier, I hope, to come up with more lasting solutions that have evaded this country so far on immigration.”

Over the past several years, Moore has built a network through nonprofits and U.S. agencies, and is fluent in Spanish, having lived in Mexico City and Nicaragua. Though telling every perspective would be an unattainable task, he aims to foster empathy through the work he has amassed.

“Sometimes the undocumented community is simply referred to in terms of statistics—for instance, that there are 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. Well, that’s 11 million different stories,” he said. And he’ll continue to tell them.

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