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  • AFP / Jim Watson
  • AFP / Jim Watson
  • AFP / Jim Watson
  • AFP / Jim Watson

A losing battle

Monday 3 July 2017

"Photographing the disappearing island of Tangier was a strange experience in several ways," writes Jim Watson, a Washington DC-based photographer.

"Although the island is steadily sinking into the Chesapeake Bay on the eastern coast of the US, you find very few climate change believers among its nearly 500-strong population. Then there is the social aspect -- gender roles are so strictly defined that it’s a bit like stepping back into the 1950s. And then there is the language."

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  • AFP / Jim Watson
  • AFP / Jim Watson
  • AFP / Jim Watson
  • AFP / Jim Watson
  • AFP / Jim Watson

The lows of the well

Friday 2 June 2017

"Every time I get this assignment, I get a knot in my stomach. Ugh. Not this again," writes Washington DC-based photographer Jim Watson.

"I call it the lowest form of photography. You are shooting people who are sitting right in front of you. There is no action, nothing interesting. So you’re constantly desperate to find something different. On the other hand, when you do, it’s always such a high because it’s just so rare."

"Welcome to photographing hearings on Capitol Hill."

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  • AFP / Guillermo Arias
  • AFP / Guillermo Arias
  • AFP / Yuri Cortez

The monumental divide

Wednesday 1 March 2017

With debate raging in the United States and Mexico over President Donald Trump’s plan to build a wall along the nations’ border, AFP photographers decided to take a closer look. Just what did this border look like? What did the people living and working there think?

So they took 10 days to drive nearly 1,750 miles along the border. Jim Watson, based in Washington, drove on the US side from California to Texas. Guillermo Arias, based in Tijuana, drove on the Mexican side from Baja California to Tamaulipas with Yuri Cortez, based in Mexico City, joining him along the way.

They found drug cartel-inspired fear on the Mexican side, an eerie quiet on the other. Endless desert and farmland stretching to the horizon. Signs of migrants, but, aside from one woman with a baby, none in sight.

They saw Americans crossing into Mexico for cheap medical care and medicine and Mexicans crossing into the US to labor on farms. Teenagers recording music by the river. People deported from the US who lived close to the border because their families remained on the other side. One guy walking along the highway with his dog was thinking of not stopping until the east coast.

They found much apprehension about the proposed wall on both sides of the border. And at times an imposing fence and barriers snaking along much of the frontier.

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