Geography of Disappearance

Marcus DeSieno

2025 — Mexico – USA border

About this series

The United Nations has declared the border between the United States and Mexico the deadliest land crossing in the world and an ongoing humanitarian crisis. Thousands of men, women, and children have died attempting to cross the 3,000- kilometer border, traversing brutal deserts and impassable mountains under extreme conditions year-round. U.S. immigration policy strategically employs a draconian philosophy of “prevention through deterrence,” deliberately funneling migrants into the most unforgiving terrain. These policies are specifically meant to maim and kill. Many of these migrants are sometimes never found as they die in the vast emptiness of the wilderness. The earth reclaims their bodies, and they disappear. Nature is used as an executioner by proxy.
I photograph along the border at the exact locations where the bodies of unknown migrants have been recovered, using autopsy reports and data from humanitarian organizations and local and state authorities. I employ alternative photographic processes in the darkroom to address the complex political and social narratives embedded in these landscapes. The hazy, impressionistic, and forceful mark- making produced by these processes operates as a metaphor for the physical and psychological violence endured by migrants in their final moments.
These sites of death are direct outcomes of oppressive ideologies rooted in a legacy of white supremacy that continues to shape the United States. The photographs function as spaces of mourning and remembrance while confronting the cruelty woven into the fabric of my country.

Photographer: Marcus DeSieno
Nationality: American
Based in: Tampa, FL – USA
Website: www.marcusdesieno.com
Instagram: @marcusdesieno

Marcus DeSieno is a visual artist interrogating institutions of power through the language of photography. DeSieno is particularly interested in documenting the continued legacies of American Empire and how visual technology is used as a tool of oppression by the State. He is Assistant Professor of Professor of Photography at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida.
DeSieno’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at the Aperture Foundation in New York, The Benaki Museum in Athens, Greece, The Finnish Museum of Photography in Helsinki, Finland, and various other galleries and museums. His work has also been featured in a variety of publications including The British Journal of Photography, The Boston Globe, GUP Magazine, Hyperallergic, Huffington Post, National Geographic, PDN, Slate, Smithsonian Magazine, and Wired. His first monograph, No Man’s Land: Views from a Surveillance State, was published by Daylight Books.