The Roads Most Traveled

The Roads Most Traveled spans 40 years of migration across the U.S./Mexico border and in the sending and the receiving communities beyond the theater of the borderline itself.  Photographs are historic documents that preserve the people for whom the ills and joys of migration for survival could not be dispassionate or distanced.   

These 8 chapters imperfectly record some of the Causes and Consequences of Migration for Survival. I don’t hold an agenda for closed borders, open borders or anything in between. The #1 author of each picture is the person or place in the image. My purpose is to provide a look at one of the most debated cultural issues in America - your fellow man – people you may have missed between 1979 - 2020.

Every image is the result of an exhausting amount of research, physical strength, time and an unwavering belief that I was recording history in the making. Whether on the migrant trail or at the end station, I seldom flinched in the face of fear, crushing emotion, disgust or joy. 

I invite you to linger on these images, study the faces, the foreground, background and edges. Don’t give them the ol’ social media scroll. Move your cursor on the photo to see a caption. It’ll help describe what you see and occasionally what you don’t see. You might wonder, as the great Dust Bowl Era photographer Dorothea Lange asked, “How can such things be?”   

1_Bartletti_BETWEEN_TWO_WORLDS.jpg

Between Two Worlds

2_Bartletti_UNEASY_NEIGHBORS.jpg

Uneasy Neighbors

3_Bartletti_ENRIQUES_JOURNEY.jpg

Enrique’s Journey

4_Bartletti_MEXICO_UNDER_SIEGE.jpg

Mexico Under Siege

5_Bartletti_PRODUCE_OF_MEXICO.jpg

Product of Mexico

6_Bartletti_WITHOUT_A_COUNTRY.jpg

Without a Country

7_Bartletti_THE_FIRE_WITHIN.jpg

The Fire Within

8_Bartletti_THE_NEW_FOREIGN_AID.jpg

The New Foreign Aid