Arturo Soto

In the series Border Documents (2016-18), I collaborated with my father to produce images and short stories that challenge the stereotypes associated with the border between Mexico and the United States. Over the last twenty years, Ciudad Juárez has endured extreme violence as a consequence of drug trafficking and corruption. I grew up listening to my father’s stories about his youth in Juárez, before NAFTA altered the city’s urban and social fabric. Following Edward Soja’s remark that biographies are geographies as much as they are histories, these photographs and texts recount sites on both sides of the border that my father associates with specific memories. The series emphasizes everyday occurrences, departing from the media’s reductive focus on violence, attempting to make visible the personal affects embedded in public spaces.

A selection of stories and images from Border Documents was published in the literary magazine Granta.