Desire Lines follows old and new movements through the desert landscape of the Sonoran borderlands (U.S.-Mexico border): paths of migrants and border agents, of missionaries and conquistadors, of indigenous people and industrialists. The messy, and at times violent, collision of peoples has created a region that defies the harmfully simplistic narratives so frequently attributed to our borders.
My photographs focus on the disorienting experience of this landscape. Deceptively empty in appearance, it’s a landscape full of eyes, heavily surveilled and controlled, with an increasing military presence that has seeped into the lives of those who have made a home here.
Desire Lines is a photography project that looks at migration as an inherently human act—one that has defined human history and the geopolitical geography of our planet. My photographs are seen in dialogue with interviews from migrants and long-term residents, 20th century oral histories and 19th and 20th century photographs. The mix of time and perspective highlights a region long marked by migration, individual desire and preservation, but also systemic dominance and colonial control, hidden in hundreds of miles of remote terrain.
Black Hawk on the migrant trail
Border patrol convoy along the Coronado Trail
Memorial in the death place of a migrant
Bed
Border patrol in pursuit
Drones over the border
The migrant border economy