Estamos Buscando A navigates a personal exploration into the migrant experience along the U.S.–Mexico border region, with a series of intimate portraits, landscape photographs, illustrations, maps, advisories and personal narratives. The book has been designed to reference the migrant safety guides that are given to migrants by Grupos Beta and the Instituto Nacional de Migración of the Mexican government.which works for the protection and defense of human rights of migrants on Mexico’s northern and southern borders, through support actions such as search and rescue, humanitarian assistance, legal advice and guidance.
6 x 5 inch aluminum plate in a folder – Limited Edition
Spanish and English
ISBN 978-0-9888551-2-0
Edition: 140
100 – Trade
25 – Limited Edition (Book + Aluminum Plate)
15 – Special Edition (Book + Postcard Set + Aluminum Plate)
Self-Published, 2016
With a design and scale meant to emulate pamphlets printed by the Mexican government that target people trying to emigrate to the United States, Estamos Buscando A (We’re Looking For) delicately navigates the uncertainty of migration. “The topic of the migrant, at this time, is so important,” Wiesner notes. “The way the format references these pamphlets is a very intelligent way to deal with this topic.”
Through a combination of beautifully seen black-and-white landscapes and portraits alongside maps illustrations, and instructions (sections include “Be Careful of Smugglers,” “If You Are Detained,” etc.), this book cleverly captures the plight of the modern-day migrant. Each of the photographs is marked with a number that corresponds to a location along the U.S. – Mexico border that can be found on the foldout map provided. Turounet transports us to where the unknown seems both dangerous and worthy of risk.
– The PhotoBook Review #011, Fall 2016, Aperture Magazine
Estamos Buscando A (We’re Looking For) is an account of the human cost of the various impediments — walls, fences and natural features — along the Mexico-United States border. In this sense, it is similar to Misrach’s “Border Cantos.” But Turounet’s little book shows things largely from the Mexican side, mostly in Sonora, which borders Arizona. It features a number of portraits of migrants or would-be migrants and written accounts of what the photographer himself saw over many years of studying their crossings.
The book, with text in Spanish and English, is ingeniously put together in the form of a guidebook, the kind of thing an NGO or government might issue to people thinking of walking across. The text warns them not to do it, counseling them, instead, to seek legal means of entry. But, wise to human obstinacy and desperation, it also offers them advice on how to proceed if they must, whom to avoid, how to prevent heat stroke and so on. Alongside Turounet’s photographs are a number of illustrations by Tim Schafer. It all makes for an unforgettable act of witness in a compact package.
