David Peinado

Lives and works in Detroit, MI

Artist statement

Artist Statement — Round Trip: An Endless Border Round Trip: An Endless Border is a long-term documentary project about the cycle of migration along the U.S.–Mexico border. Since 2021, I have photographed migrants moving through northern Mexico, crossing the Rio Grande, encountering increasingly militarized border infrastructure, being detained or deported, and, in many cases, attempting the journey again. I grew up in Ciudad Juárez, directly across the border from El Paso, in a family shaped by migration. This work comes from that personal history and from my attempt to understand a border that has been present throughout my life. Rather than documenting migration as a linear journey from one country to another, Round Trip looks at repetition. Crossing, apprehension, deportation, waiting, and crossing again become part of an endless cycle. Families are separated and reunited, policies change, new barriers appear, but movement continues. Through photographs made on both sides of the border, I am interested in the tension between human movement and the systems designed to contain it, and in what happens when a geographical boundary becomes a recurring condition of everyday life.

Artwork