Family, Diaspora, and the Politics of Care in Griselda San Martin’s The Wall, 2015-16

Abstract

This article examines a series of photographs by Griselda San Martin, a Spanish journalist and documentary photographer based in New York City and Mexico City. The series focuses on the experiences of people at Friendship Park, a bi-national park located in the border region of San Diego, United States, and Tijuana, Mexico. Working in Tijuana, San Martin engaged with families as they attempted to connect with loved ones across the border in San Diego. Many of the people she met at Friendship Park had become separated from family members after living as undocumented migrants in the US and then being deported. This article looks at how San Martin’s approach to the representation of migration differs from mainstream news coverage, which often represent Mexicans in clichéd terms, either as threatening or as victims. I draw on political theorist Deva Woodly’s work to consider San Martin’s approach as grounded in a politics of care. I show that in San Martin’s work, care is a means of reconfiguring image making as an ethical practice in which the ambivalence and challenges of diasporic experience and family separation are recognized, and I explore her series as an important recasting of the photography of Mexican migration.