Tales from the border: Day 15
For two weeks we’ve been hauling around a massive black plastic case that fills nearly the entire trunk of our Jeep. It’s a huge space-suck and has also caught the suspicious eyes of customs officials on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border _ at least until we open it.
Rodrigo’s wooden camera is a primitive device modeled on ones he saw local photographers using to take portraits in Kabul, Afghanistan. A box with a lens and space for a developing lab inside, it was a forerunner to the Polaroid instant camera.
AP photographer Rodrigo Abd uses a wooden box camera to make a portrait of Mexican retiree Miguel Trejo, in Tijuana, Mexico, Wednesday, April 5, 2017. (AP Photo/Jordi Lebrija)
This whole trip we’ve been waiting for the right place for Rodrigo to spend a day using it to make striking black-and-white portraits of the people who inhabit the frontier lands. We’ve been looking for a place that offers a diversity of faces and stories, and also enough foot traffic to provide a steady supply of subjects.
Map of Tijuana, Mexico.
Video: Faces of Tijuana - Finding the right place for a box camera
Text by Christopher Sherman & photos by Rodrigo Abd
Sherman and Abd will update their travelogue with regular text entries, photographs and videos.