View of Colonia Libertad with trees and houses in the foreground and showing a partial view of the United States-Mexico border fence in the centre right, San Diego County, California, United States, and Colonia Libertad, Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico

People:

Geoffrey James (photographer)

Title:

Date:

1997

Description:

- The series "Running Fence 1997" focuses "on the first 14 miles of the border fence that separates the United States and Mexico, beginning at the Pacific Ocean and ending in the Otay Mountains.... [It] analyzes the "idea" of the border and explores its iconography, the border being a subject that is of extreme importance to the public as the world proceeds towards greater globalization. [Geoffrey] James has written of the project: "[The border fence] was built by the US Army Corps of Engineers in 1994, out of recycled metal landing strip - the most visible symbol of what is known as Operation Gatekeeper. Because the steel sheets are placed in the ground so that their ridges run horizontally, a man can hop over the fence with ease; and no Mexican child ever seems to be impeded from retrieving a soccer ball from US territory. The real barrier to illegal immigration from Mexico into the USA is less visible: hundreds of buried sensors linked to a central computer, nightscopes, helicopters and Border Patrol Agents in white Broncos."" (Evans).

Form:
photographs

Quantity / Object type:
1 photograph(s)

Technique and media:

Gelatin silver print

Dimensions:

comp.: 46.2 x 57.9 cm sheet: 50.8 x 60.6 cm

Reference number:

PH1997:0057

Point of View:

partial view
exterior view

Inscription:

titled, dated and signed - by the photographer, in graphite, verso, l.l.: "Geoffrey James"; l.c.: with title; l.c.: with title; l.r.: "AP"

Location:

Colonia Libertad; Tijuana; Baja California; Mexi

Subject:

architecture
engineering

Subject Descriptive Terms:

trees
fence
houses
city
townscape (representation)
geopolitical boundaries

Credit line:
Collection Centre Canadien d'Architecture/
Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal;
Don de Geoffrey James et Jessica Bradley/
Gift of Geoffrey James and Jessica Bradley

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