Migration Atlas

In 2001, I traveled almost the full length of the Arizona-Mexico border to record the multiple ways the landscape is marked, by traces of human migration and by structures the U.S. Border Patrol and nonprofit groups have erected.

I documented a range of markers (water-station flags, Border Patrol surveillance equipment, and cast-off migrant clothing, bicycles, and other possessions). The largest part of the project became the documenting of the traces of migration on the desert floor. Thousands of personal objects (clothing, water bottles, toiletries, etc.) are scattered across the region’s dry riverbeds, washes and trails.

The project highlights part of the material experience of crossing into the U.S. and reveals the extended border area as one that is both transitional and transnational. It also focuses inquiry into landscapes as discursive, historical and geographic spaces, while questioning political and cultural notions of borders and border crossings. Pursuing these issues seems even more critical now in 2001, with talk of homeland security, border patrol and the registration and surveillance of “foreigners” so much in the foreground. Read more.