ALEX WEBB: CROSSINGS

MCASD Downtown September 21 through December 7, 2003


PHOTO: ALEX WEBB: SAN YSIDRO, CALIFORNIA, ARREST OF BORDER CROSSERS, 1979, COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND JOSEPH BELLOWS GALLERY, LA JOLLA


Noted photographer Alex Webb has spent thirty years covering the United States-Mexico border, and his work captures the humor, pathos, paradox, and tragedy of life in the region. Alex Webb: Crossings consists of 40 photographs that document Webb's extensive coverage of border life since the 1970s. Webb's photographs illuminate the precarious world of illegal border crossers: tedious waits, clandestine travels north, detainments, and arrests. His striking visions of Tijuana, El Paso and other legendary border towns suggest crossings that are cultural, economic, and spiritual in nature. This body of work offers an indelible portrait of the complex, culturally rich land of the border where differences between the two lands are blurred, and where an atmosphere of transience and crossings dominates.

The exhibition is accompanied by a book cataloguing the entire Crossings project.