Dominic Bracco II • Photographer Profile

The U.S. Mexico borderlands are most often described as the peripheries of a dividing line. My Republic refuses that lens categorically and reframes the landscape as a character that creates a unique and unifying experience far into the American Southwest and deep into northern Mexico.

“There are two ways of thinking about living here; either you go on every day and when it’s your turn to die you die, or you live every day in fear.” – Daniel Gonzalez, 26, a resident of Ciudad Juarez who later moved to El Paso, Texas.

Angelica Ortiz collapsed on the asphalt outside the morgue’s single door. The sun dried her tears. She lifted herself up to glance through the small glass window as if to check if he was still there. Inside her ten-year-old son lay on a cold steel gurney. She fell back down to her knees. Her husband still didn’t know. She was alone but for a small crowd of journalists who stopped to take her picture. Renato Lacayo, a Honduran journalist, stood back and watched them.

The ocean is man’s last true relationship with the wild. Fishermen and the waters they work cannot be separated. And to save one, you must save the other.