Roamings

A Journey Through Land, Memory, and Borders

“His images tell the story of an individual between two nations.”

-Laura González-Flores

Byron Brauchli is a Mexican and American photographer and printmaker who has lived in Mexico since the 1980s. Specializing in Mexican American studies and historic photographic processes, he has an M.F.A. from U.T., Austin, and is a researcher at the Universidad Veracruzana, Mexico. A member of the Mexican National System of Creators, and a Fulbright Fellow, he has exhibited in venues such as the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Mexican National Photo Archives (Pachuca), among many others, with work in collections including the Center for Creative Photography, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Fundación William Cuendet, (Switzerland) to mention a few. Books of his work include
On the Line, Crossroads and this latest monograph, Roamings.

Roamings presents the Rio Grande River landscape as a personal history and a political-migratory construct within an historical contextualization from the Gadson Purchase and the subsequent USGS photographic surveys of American Southwest to contemporary migratory and water use issues.

Laura Gonzalez Flores’ critical essay accompanying the imagery draws from personal and family history—marked by migration, geology, and exploration--situating Brauchli’s work within a broader reflection on how photographic representations of the American landscape have historically contributed to territorial expansion, resource extraction, and the construction of national identity. His images engage with the visual legacy of 19th-century survey photography while simultaneously questioning their ideological implications.

Adopting both a documentary and aesthetic approach, the imagery further references the nineteenth-century documentary surveys with exhibition prints in photogravure, platinum and cyanotype. The landscapes depicted oscillate between the sublime and the altered, revealing traces of human intervention, environmental transformation, and historical violence embedded within the terrain.

By approaching the photobook as both an artistic and conceptual form, this book reflects on photography’s capacity to “suture” divided territories—bridging oppositions such as nature and culture, border and movement, Mexico and the United States—while critically addressing the role of images in shaping our understanding of place and belonging.

This first edition includes an insightful essay by art historian Laura González-Flores and a design by Teresa Peyret that interweaves maps, coordinates and binational historical and geographical issues.

• ISBN: 978-607-2621-25-1 (English version)

• 150 pages printed on 150 g Magno satin coated paper

• 8.5 x 9.5 inches

• Over 80 photographs by Byron Brauchli

• Available in English and Spanish editions