Simon Norfolk

Mercury halide: Pa’ una ciudad del norte from Arizona/Mexico, 2006, C-print

Border: De la grande Babylon from Arizona/Mexico, 2006, C-print

Blazing lights illuminate the night sky in Simon Norfolk’s photographs of the walled border legendary desert landscape of northern Mexico and southern Arizona. For the past decade, US border patrol policy has pushed the flow of illegal Mexican immigrants away from densely populated urban areas like El Paso and San Diego and into unpopulated, dangerously arid regions. One strategy forcing this move is the recent construction of walls along the border near urban areas. Bristling with sensors and detective devices, the more remote areas have become increasingly more treacherous to traverse. Still, half a million arrests are made in Arizona alone each year, and by some estimates 5,000 illegal aliens attempt entry into the US through Arizona each night during the peak winter season.

Simon Norfolk was born in 1963 in Lagos, Nigeria. He has had solo exhibitions at the Minneapolis Center for Photography, the Portland Art Museum, the Imperial War Museum, London, and the Illinois Holocaust Museum, among others. His work is in such collections as the Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Sir Elton John Collection; and the George Eastman House, Rochester, NY. He currently lives and works in Brighton, UK.