The United Nations has declared the border between the United States and Mexico to be the deadliest land crossing in the world and a humanitarian crisis.
Thousands of men, women, and children have died crossing the 1,900-mile border through brutal deserts and impassable mountains with harsh climate conditions year-round.
The U.S. government strategically uses draconian policies here that follow a philosophy of “prevention throughdeterrence,” which forcefully directs migrants into unforgiving terrain where they wander fordays in the elements. These policies are specifically meant to maim and kill. Many of these migrants are never found as they die in the vast emptiness of the wilderness sometimes hundreds of miles from towns and cities. Nature reclaims their bodies, and they disappear. Nature is used as an executioner by proxy by the government.
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.
These sites of death are the direct consequences of oppressive ideologies, built upon a legacy of white supremacy, that continue to guide the United States forward into the 21st century. The photographs act as a space for somber remembrance of the deceased and serve as an examination of the cruelty woven into the fabric of my country.
About Marcus DeSieno
Marcus DeSieno is a visual artist who interrogates institutions of power through the language of photography. He is particularly interested in documenting the continued legacies of the American Empire and how visual technology is used as a tool of oppression by the State. DeSieno received his MFA in Studio Art from the University of South Florida and currently serves as Associate Professor of Photography at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at the Aperture Foundation in New York, the Benaki Museum in Athens, Greece, the Finnish Museum of Photography in Helsinki, Finland, and various other galleries and museums.
His photography has also been featured in a variety of publications, including The British Journal of Photography, The Boston Globe, FeatureShoot, GUP Magazine, Hyperallergic, Huffington Post, National Geographic, PDN, Slate, Smithsonian Magazine, The Washington Post, and Wired. His first monograph, No Man’s Land: Views from a Surveillance State, was published by Daylight Books. [Official Website]
