Tierra Prometida / Promised Land

“I don’t care for the American Dream. I didn’t want to leave my home, family, or entire life. I was forced to.”- Blanca, 34, Guerrero, Mexico

Since 2020, I have traveled the length of the U.S.-Mexico border, volunteered with humanitarian aid organizations, and created photographs that look beyond the sensationalized narratives that dominate American news and politics. My photographic work seeks a deeper, humanitarian understanding of both the forces driving migration and, more importantly, the people who are forced to migrate. Families I have met have left at a moment’s notice—escaping death threats, political persecution, and cartel violence. The dangers they face do not end as they cross the international border.  Promised Land interrogates the myth of the American Dream from the perspective of the borderland environs, the people seeking asylum in the United States, and the volunteers and groups who are engaged in helping people migrating with vital needs such as food, shelter, health care, and search and rescue in the desert.

As an American photographer who grew up in an immigrant community in South Florida to a father who was a political refugee from Morocco, the unspoken specters of my family's traumatic migration stories transmitted a sense of ambiguous loss of a homeland that could never be recovered. This intergenerational burden compels me to understand how and why people are forced to flee and the ways a country like the United States continues to demonize and reject those seeking refuge and protection.

As life becomes increasingly difficult for families who have migrated currently living in the United States, my role as a migrant justice activist and artist is to advocate for my community, and to continue accompanying those who are being threatened by the actions of the current presidential administration.  I will continue to document during this historic time, protecting the identities and locations of the people I am photographing. Funds from the PHMuseum 2025 Women Photographer’s Grant will be instrumental in my continuing this work, to pay for travel, film, processing, and printing.

In my work as a documentarian, I am continually asking and exploring questions about how to convey a sense of both empathy and urgency in the photographs. My intent is to communicate the necessity for compassion. The large format 8x10 camera I utilize is entirely relevant: the time it takes to set up and make a photograph allows for conversation and collaboration with the person, or people, sitting in front of my camera. While I am creating this work, I live in the shelters that house people seeking asylum, as part of the community, part of the family. I hear stories and make personal connections with the people I am photographing. At the heart of it, migration is one chapter of a person's story; it is not their entire story.