They Transform Objects Of Undocumented Immigrants Into Moving Works Of Art

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

What the Border Patrol considered trash at the Ajo, Arizona customs post, photographer Tom Kiefer rescued and treasured for years to turn into poignant works of art now on display at the renowned Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.

With the title of “The American Dream | American Dream: Photographs by Tom Kiefer”, the photographs that make up the exhibition show personal items confiscated from hundreds of undocumented immigrants who tried to cross the border from 2003 to 2014 and rescue humanity from those who often become mere statistics.

According to the museum, Kiefer worked as a janitor at the federal agency during that period, and after receiving authorization to donate confiscated food to a local dispensary, he found a variety of personal items that were thrown away daily.

They were medicines, letters, clothes and toys, among many other things. Objects that caught the attention of the photographer, who began secretly collecting them to portray them years later with his lens.

The images show, among other things, bottles of water, medicine, combs, canned food, clothes and even love letters, which Kiefer found in the trash of the stall.

"[Throwing away personal items] underscores the cruelty of the tentative punishment the government feels it must impose on these people," the photographer told the LA Times. "It is clear that the majority are decent [people], who contribute and who want nothing more than to improve their lives and that of their family."

The exhibition of more than 100 photographs aims, according to the museum, to show how the treatment of the most vulnerable defines the character of the nation, being a reflection of what American society is and what it wants.

In 2003, Kiefer accepted the part-time janitor job to fund his creative work as an artist. Among the first memories that she keeps in her memory, according to the newspaper, is having seen how the canned food that the migrants were carrying was thrown away, so she asked permission to donate it. It was then that she began to stumble upon the personal items she photographed for the exhibition.

"When I started to see a rosary, a Bible, or a purse, it was when I understood that no one would believe me if I had not collected these items," Kiefer told the newspaper.

The photographer assures that he has, among other things, piles of blankets, medicines for depression, toilet paper and shoelaces, which he would need to live to be 100 years old in order to portray.

"These objects are sacred," he commented. “Our government is really taking a Bible or a rosary from these people. How twisted is that?

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