2007 fall master.dmc3.qxp
7/26/07
10:30 AM
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SURVEY OF NEW BOOKS
Border Film Project: Migrant & Minutemen Photos from the U.S.-Mexico Border TEXT BY RUDY ADLER, VICTORIA CRIADO, AND BRETT HUNEYCUTT. EDITED BY DEBORAH AARONSON. Harry N. Abrams, New York, 2007. Designed by karlssonwilker. Printed by Elegance Printing and Book Binding, Hong Kong. Die-cut hardcover. 176 pp., 150 four-color illustrations, 6 1⁄4 × 8 1⁄2 $22.95
Border Film Project examines the dangerous game that takes the place of a meaningful, effective immigration policy between Mexico and the United States. Adler, Criado and Huneycutt distributed cameras to illegal crossers and amateur border patrollers and asked both groups to document their side of the issue as they experience it. The resultant series of images, culled from more than 2,000 pictures, exposes the gravity of the situation at our border and asks us to re-examine what we think we know about illegal immigration. The first interior spread of the book makes it quite clear why the crossers take the potentially fatal risk of breaching the border; as a man reclines in a very modest, dirt-floor room, the caption explains, “Here you earn enough for sugar, the basics, nothing more. There, they say, you can earn enough for tomorrow.” Later images, such as one of a woman with feet rubbed raw from the trip, depict the high price paid for following this path to the American Dream. Similar spreads reveal the equally vital motivations of the Minutemen and defy their stereotyped depiction as vigilantes; portraits of men and women watching the horizon for crossers accompany patriotic words about defending the country and enforcing its laws. The book alternates between views from the crossers and patrollers; the pictures are as diverse as the multiple photographers who made them. Many of the images have the haphazard feel of pictures taken on the 38 photo-eye Fall 2007
fly, sometimes at strange moments in the process, like parents remembering to take a picture or two in the delivery room. Others are so poignant, they seem staged. For example, one photograph shows an American couple negotiating with two crossers; this image and its caption about the dollars and cents of hiring illegal immigrant labor seem to encapsulate the complex social, racial, and economic dynamics at play along the border. While our elected representatives posture and bang gavels, the border between these two nation states remains a life-ordeath dividing line between multiple hopes, aspirations, and expectations. Border Film Project offers no practical, concrete suggestions for solving the border dilemma. The book does, however, make clear why we must have the courage to confront this issue: the face of the child on the book’s back cover may be all you need to know. MARY GOODWIN