ABSTRACT
The topics of transit and exclusion are central to the second chapter on US borders, a photo essay on the Border Project by Inés Valdez and Susan Harbage Page. The authors take an activist stance, exposing the inhumanity of immigration policies that lead to flight across dangerous desert landscapes and detention for prolonged periods. The chapter’s particular focus is the crossing near Brownsville, Texas, and Matamaros, Mexico, but the sadness and anger in the images will resonate with viewers from many cultures. Harbage Page has also created what she terms an “anti-archive” of photographs which record the negative space around individual border crossings, items left behind ranging from tires to clothes strewn on the ground near the Rio Grande. Identity documents may also be left behind deliberately to make it harder for border patrol agents to send migrants back to Mexico.
