Them by Rosalind Fox Solomon

Alex Webb has been photographing the United States and Mexico border for over three decades. In his book ‘Crossings: Photographs from the U.S. – Mexico Border,’ published in 2003, Webb highlights decades worth of work he has made documenting the relationship between these two countries. He describes how his interest in the US/Mexico relations have developed through taking many trips over the border and observing the culture. Webb states, “On that first trip I became interested by the notion of the border as a kind of third country, neither the United States nor Mexico, a place with its own rules, its own traditions.” Webb describes a sense of transience that has helped to expand his work at the border, a feeling that also permeates throughout this work. The space he documents does not exist in the United States, nor does it exist in Mexico. The photographs depict an in-between world where people are perpetually looking to go to the other side, whether that be Mexicans coming north to work, move, and shop, or American tourists traveling south. The photographs in ‘Crossings’ bring to light a parlous world illegal border crossings, examining citizen’s long waits at the fence, a late-night crossings, detainments and arrests. Alongside these illegal crossings are the pilgrimages that are of cultural, economic, or spiritual nature, including religious celebrations, day laborers, tourists, and fiestas. The interchange of people and ideas leads to an area where Webb is able to document a terrain where cultural differences are blurred. The two countries, wealth and poverty, and industrialized efficiency and spirituality all become transformed in this process. The United States border communities rely on both legal and illegal labor from Mexico as well as Mexican shoppers, while the Mexican border towns are sustained by North American tourism. Various forms of smuggling, whether that be drugs and people heading north, or electronics and guns moving southward, that have come to define the border, have also come to define Webb’s documentation of this area. Webb’s series begins in black and white, and transforms into color as his working practice has shifted. ‘Crossings’ constructs a highly saturated and colorful world typical of Webb’s work, using complex observations created through the use of thoughtfully composed layers. Webb uses figures and shadows, allowing them to be naturally framed by pieces of the city, to transform the border into a painterly world. The book is supplemented with an essay by Tom Miller, who has spent decades writing about the fusion and division of the American Southwest and Latin America. The combination of dynamic photographs and comprehensive writing illustrate a complex portrait of where two nations blend.
By Alexa Cushing