Geography of Disappearance: Migrant Deaths on the US/Mexico Border

The United Nations has declared the US/Mexico border the deadliest land crossing in the world and a humanitarian crisis. Thousands of men, women, and children have died crossing this border that spans thousands of miles across brutal desert and impassible mountains with harsh climate conditions year-round. The United States government strategically uses this unforgiving terrain to force migrants into an unfamiliar land where they wander for days in the elements through policies of “prevention through deterrence.” Nature is used here as an executioner by proxy. In “Geography of Disappearance,” I photograph along the border and go to the exact locations where the bodies of unknown migrants have been recovered using autopsy reports and data collected by humanitarian organizations. I use alternative photographic processes in the darkroom to speak to the complex social and political narratives that run through these landscapes. The hazy, impressionistic, and forceful mark-making embedded in these photographic processes act as a metaphor for the physical and psychological violence that these migrants experienced as they perished.