I just got an audio recorder for some projects I’m working on and I’m starting to see some of the hidden potential in this little toy.  This turned up on my voicemail this morning, made it to the blog by evening.  Ah, the speed of technology.  I tend to hang on to these kinds of messages and have a good twenty of them saved on my cellphone.  Another dozen on my landline.  Looks like I’ll finally be able to archive them away and free up voicemail space.

Jeremy, hope you get your sasquatch, you effin’ weirdo.

A different way of looking at the same 12 hour timeframe in which I shot the Polaroids in the previous post.  Polaroids tend to be something that forces a slower, more patient approach to the  photograph.  At a dollar per frame, too much sketching around can get costly.  But digital gives a little more freedom to explore.  I shot the same subject with the idea of looking at the border as a place where people leave behind evidence, discard stuff as they walk the desert, looking at it as though I were following along with a flashlight.  Not quite a completed photo-package just yet, but for shooting a very static subject in the span of one day, I’m pretty happy with the resulting images.  Click below for the rest.

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Driving along the fence separating Mexico from the US, my radio dial finds only Rush Limbaugh and narcocorridos.  It’s fitting, the polemic of the borderland airwaves, those two forces of equal and opposing weight pressing against each other along that thin, straight line that slices the belly of the Sonoran desert.  Here, in this no mans’ land, the mountains of neighboring countries stare back at each other across a wide, expansive flat.  It is a meeting place of sorts.  The point at which the Rocky Mountains end and the Sierra Madre begin.  It’s here where four ecosystems converge in a quiet sort of chaos, their boundaries controlled by the subtle forces of climate and topography.  It is also the site of the newest section of wall dividing Mexico from the US, lengths of steel mesh and iron driven into the ground like tent stakes along a laser-straight line.  Mexico to the south, the U.S. to the north.

Alan Blixt, a volunteer guide on the nearby Coronado National Memorial, points out a red flower for which my notes do not recall a name.  The plant blooms in the early spring, well before other flowers, making its own sneaky effort to beat Darwin at his game.  Early blossoms avoid competition for pollination, explains Blixt.  ”All species are trying to expand their range,” he continues as he tells me about nature’s slow war being waged on the desert floor where each ecosystem fights for control of limited space.

The flower serves as a peculiar metaphor, one of the many grays buffering the firm, black line of the border fence.  There is grey to the south, those border towns built around entire industries catering to the needs of their northern couterparts.  And there is also grey to the north, places where language and culture have more foundation in Mexico than in the anglicized dreams of protectionists and xenophobes.  It seems to me that the fence itself serves a very limited purpose of realizing, in visual terms, a line which was formerly best known to cartographers, a way to impose black-and-white order over something much less clear.

Indeed, there is no shortage of signs pointing to the fact that immigration through Arizona’s desert continues in spite of the fence.  Empty water bottles collect in eddies, blown up against the fence by the broad current of the wind whipping the arid landscape.  There is plenty of additional evidence also: discarded backpacks, discarded clothing, discarded cell phones, shoe tracks, foot paths, holes cut through the fence, holes dug under the fence, and ladders.  

Yes, ladders.

Nothing feeds the absurdity of an 18 foot-high, 49 billion dollar fence, like a 20 foot ladder.  In a sense, it is Roadrunner beating Wile E. Coyote’s latest invention with nothing but guile, that moment when our feathered hero steps out of the way as the cartoon canine drives his latest, greatest ACME bird-killer off the cliff, hanging for a moment in the air before plummeting into a small explosion of dust far below.

I am not saying this to belittle the broader notion of rule-of-law, rather to point out that the fence serves a certain fallacy which I am finding as I continue working stories related to immigration.  The fence puts the cart before the horse and sends a message that is not exactly true; it imposes a bright line by which we are supposed to be able to mechanically identify those who offend the integrity of our borders in that West Side Story-esque kind of way.  If you’re on the wrong side of the tracks, we’re all supposed to know it.

The problem is that the issue has never been that clear.  The south 40 of the immigration backlog is filled with thousands of Blixt’s little, red flowers, immigrants whose cases defy our conventional wisdom about what makes an immigrant documented or undocumented.  It is quite possible for a person to enter lawfully but, for the purposes of the law, be undocumented; Conversely, it is also possible for for someone to enter unlawfully and still be eligible for some form of legal status.  

I know this is not quite the conclusion that folks who see the border as a black-and-white line with black-and-white consequences care to hear, though it is the subject of much of my upcoming project work, looking at the shades of grey in immigration and the havoc our mechanical outlook on the subject has wreaked.  Stay tuned to the blog over the next few months for new work on the subject.  

For the time being, you’ll have to settle for black-and-white Polaroids of our very grey border.

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April 15th marks the last day to purchase from Luceo’s promotional print deal.  Prices and availability will change with the upcoming launch of our new site.  Purchase before day’s end:  http://www.luceoimages.com/store

Lutheran Pastor Don Marxhausen, above, and Evangelical Pastor George Kirsten, below, for Newsweek.  Both pastors were involved in the fallout after the Columbine shootings.  Marxhausen performed the funeral for shooter Dylan Klebold and spoke on behalf of the Klebold family, a move which would see him pushed from his church.  Kirsten presided over the funeral of Cassie Bernall, one of the Columbine victims who, according to rumors during the shooting, was killed after professing her belief in God; the rumor later proved false though the metaphorical aspect of the story has continued to inspire evangelicals.  Kirsten, a Vietnam pilot who survived a helicopter crash as well as a devastating explosion that claimed the lives of many of his comrades, was diagnosed with PTSD following the shootings.  Read more here.

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Really enjoyed my time with these two men –particularly Pastor Marxhausen.  I had been in Wyoming shooting for the early part of the week, making use of almost every waking hour on the story I had been commissioned to photograph.  I met Marxhausen and his wife after shooting from dawn until early afternoon before making a six hour drive back to Denver for the portrait.  Tired as the drive left me, it was really the first time I’d revisited the subject of Columbine since going to the school late in the afternoon on the day of the shooting.  In my past life I worked for an ambulance company based a little over two miles from the school and also volunteered with a small fire department where I lived in Jefferson County.  I came to the school sometime near dusk with a truck that was to provide lighting for the efforts (which had essentially wound down from an emergency scene to a crime scene).  The next day I found myself volunteering to do standby while the bomb squad detonated and deactivated a truckload of explosives that had been delivered to the school by the shooters.  It’s a little bit strange that the specter of Columbine seems to have had a net desensitizing effect on our culture, these types of shootings becoming commonplace enough that the front page of the Denver Post –Columbine’s hometown paper –managed to only find space for a tiny blurb on the front page for a shooting that killed 14 people last week in Binghamton, New York.  Columbine was the first, these other shootings growing less and less meaty to a readership that has already seen the story.  Same plot, different actors, I guess.

Marxhausen told me that he participates in a weekly discussion on religion, explaining that God is in the conversation and not the result.  Ten years after the shootings, then, it seems like a good thing that people are still talking about the tragedy, the cultural fallout being less important than the simple fact that it is still relevant and in our thoughts. 

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In Riverton, Wyoming for a shoot that will keep me here for a few days.  Beautiful drive through the snow-covered high desert.

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Brothers Dan and Scott Leis, both dressed in World War II era uniforms, walk through the snow to inspect the target they were aiming at with their cannon.

Scenes from the Rocky Mountain Fifty Caliber Shooting Association’s 2009 Machine Gun Shoot.  Each year the organization holds two shoots during which machine gun owners and vendors bring their guns to shoot for a three day-long event.  Organizer Bob McBride described the muddy Fort Morgan event as “machine gun Woodstock without the dope.”  The annual events draw shooters from around the world to shoot at propane tanks, cars filled with containers of fuel, boxes of stick dynamite, and other “reactive ” targets.  Gave me a little bit of an opportunity to continue sketching around the peripheries of my Gun Culture U.S.A. project.  As much as I’d love to re-editorialize about the event, I’m pretty happy with the writeup I offered for a similar shoot hosted by the same organization last spring.  The full text is available here.

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Kevin Moloney, pictured with his M8, snapping a photograph following a guest lecture given by his former student, Tomas van Houtryve (pictured in the foreground).

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In 2008, a group of Kevin Moloney’s current and former students each submitted their own words about the photographer/professor in what turned into a multi-page group nomination of Kevin for the NPPA’s Robin F. Garland Educator of the Year Award.  The document is something to read, an outpouring of heartfelt words from generations of students that have passed through his classroom.  The official NPPA blurb, following his successful nomination for the award, reads as follows: “The school has neither a photojournalism major or minor, but Moloney has created many award-winning photojournalists from his two elective photo courses for years while showing a passion for teaching and visual storytelling.”

The blurb errs on the side of understatement.  Given the half-dozen name schools offering full, four year and graduate programs in photojournalism populated by hundreds niche educators, Kevin’s achievements are astounding.  With nothing but two elective courses, this one-man department has turned out a cadre of accomplished photographers, recruiting them with his passion and enthusiasm for the craft, taking students from their respective fields of study and giving them the tools and encouragement to grow in the profession.

As tempted as I am to rewrite the entire text of the nomination we submitted to the NPPA, I will let Kevin’s words speak for themselves.  I’m proud to announce Kevin’s new blog –a resource for students, photographers, and educators alike.  Have a read for yourself and be sure to add it to your RSS feed:  http://blog.kevinmoloney.com