Alejandro Morales, Juárez Archive

Narrator: Artist Alejandro Morales has offered something for free: a pocket-size viewfinder filled with images of Juárez, Mexico, the border city where he was born.

Alejandro Morales: This is a project I started last year during the pandemic. It’s an archive project. And most of my projects are like that. I work with images and photographs that I take from newspapers, from websites. And this time I use Google Maps.

And what I wanted to do was to see how the city was changing in the two years that I haven’t been able to go there. I was missing a lot, my home and my family, and the nostalgic idea of the printed photographs and 35 millimeter cameras. So I wanted to try to do something where you can translate this digital image of Google Maps, like a screenshot into a 35 millimeter photograph, which is unique. You can not share it. And it’s something really personal and intimate. 

Narrator: Morales says that the media publicized the violence in Juárez in ways that exploit images of bodies and bloodshed.  

Alejandro Morales: So if I want to talk about my city to someone else that doesn’t know it, it is not a good idea to use these kinds of images. You have to use something else, so they can be drawn to it like these photos. If I show you the things that I see in the newspapers, you’re not gonna want to talk to me anymore. I think it’s a good experience if you see something else,  something that makes you think about what's going on there.