The everyday aesthetics

"Beautifying is one classic operation of the camera, and it tends to bleach out a moral response to what is shonw. Uglifying, showing something at its worst, is a more modern function: didactic, it invites and active response. For photographs to accuse, and possibly to alter conduct, they must shock."

Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, 1993.

To shock. That is precisely what I was looking for last summer in Tapachula when I decided to photograph some of the hundreds of people seeking asylum, waiting for some resolution to reach northern Mexico or just resting before continuing on the road. Where were the photographs that nobody had taken and that portrayed the same horrific situation?

While searching for affliction, despair, crying, uncertainty, I found this: commitment, passion, touch, aesthetics. These photographs reflect another narrative about the migratory situation in Tapachula. Where there is room for state terror and bureaucracy, there is also room for aesthetics and contact.

*These photographs were inspired by the work Recortando Fronteras: Un peluqueo a contrapelo de la migración contemporánea en Santiago de Chile (Triming Borders: A counterpile assesing on contemporary migration in Santiago de Chile), by Karem Pérez Ascencio and Claudio Alvarado Lincopi, published by Ediciones Comunidad de Historia Mapuche.