Still Playing With Fire

Still Playing With Fire is a documentary exploration of the colonial violence in Southern New Mexico against Indigenous and Chicano people through the lens of three deaths in the photographer's own family.

Still Playing With Fire addresses legacies of image making in relation to cycles of trauma, violence, forgiveness and self determination. By photographing his own family, Marcus asserts them into the cultural and historical cannons of New Mexico and draws lines between these narratives of violence and acts of violence perpetrated by and against his family. From the preservation of the Fort Selden site as a symbol genocide against Indigenous people, to the death of his grandfather, an enrolled Agua Caliente Cahuilla man, following his shooting while in police custody, through the murder of his uncle, and the overdose of his younger cousin. The act of image making serves to functionally highlight and perpetuate this violence by cementing the moments in time as art work and as artifacts of an ongoing war of attrition.

The work aims to indict the viewers, subject and artists as participants in violent systems that maintain the status quo in New Mexico, some as victims and perpetrators of abuse and self fulfilling prophecies, others as beneficiaries of centuries of slaughter, theft and exploitation of the original inhabitants of the region.

Through photography Marcus clings to fading moments of both joy and pain. Some of the people in the images have since died, some have been forever changed. Celebration and good days still lay ahead but a deep mourning over what has passed is prominent in the photographs. Forever frozen in time the images serve as a memorial for both living and dead relatives. The repetition of subjects, intergenerational resemblance and the similarity of circumstances between events taking place over time reinforce the idea that we are all still playing with fire.