TITLE: The Wall, work and Liberty

The U.S. -Mexico border became a flashpoint under the 45th President. A border fence (Wall) was reimagined to keep those from Central America and Mexico from entering the U.S.A. Most, who hope to enter this land to work and contribute, seeking a better life.
Though the wall helped stem the flow of migrants it was just as important as a metaphor. Cattle from Mexico are brought through gates in the fence, less than a kilometer from where humans are denied entry. In California, seasonal migrant worker during harvest as a storm gathers.
In Texas, the last remaining hand-drawn ferry crosses the Rio Grande multiple times daily at a border crossing. In Nogales, Arizona a woman dressed as Ms. Liberty smirks as a 4th of July parade passes the razor wire covered border fencing.
Asylum seekers in a transitional care station in Texas in early 2021 are bookended by a South Asian family (Naturalized citizens) at the actual Statue of Liberty. And finally, wrecks in Texas along Trump's wall.

AUTHOR: Joseph Patronite (United States)

Joseph Patronite has spent his life behind the camera, having his first pictures published in newspapers while in his teens followed by a dozen years of daily photojournalism. Sports, editorial and advertising imagery have been commissioned and produced since the 1980’s.

He is a three-time nominee for the Pulitzer Prize in Photography.

In the early 2000s, leaving sports event and sports advertising behind, Patronite rededicated his interests, efforts and energies to returning to documentary photography, his first passion.

Over the past two decades, long-term photographic still essays have included the struggles, decline and death of his father due to Alzheimer’s Disease, a one-tented family circus, operated since the 1850s. Dia de los Muertos/Day of the Dead is an on-going project created in 2008.

The most ambitious project, “My Americana”, started in 2015 is a contemporary collection of imagery on the United States of America. Thematically this project deals with current issues, patriotism, secular and non-secular celebrations among other topics. This project, mostly self-funded and personally motivated continues in 2021, having switched directions to coverage of social strife, political divide and the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.

The outcome of this essay will be in book and exhibition forms. Patronite’s interests also include short documentary cinema. Projects like African American women living for decades with HIV/AIDS, contemporary burlesque and a world ranked triathlete are finished or in various places in production.