The Brooklyn Rail

Al río / To the River

For the last six years, Zoe Leonard has been making photographs along the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo, particularly the many miles where the river is used to demarcate the border between the US and Mexico. The work is informed by the artist’s deep consideration of the river as a natural entity, and the human constructions engineered to control the movement of water, people, and commerce. The result of this durational engagement is a large-scale work, the first part of which is printed here: a series of eight close-ups of the river surface that expose and amplify the shifting tensions in the water's surface.