©Marcus DeSieno, Unknown Migrant Female Cause of Death Exposure Their Body Was Found One Week After Death New Mexico, 2024, from Geography of Disappearance: Migrant Deaths on the US/Mexico Border

Congratulations to Marcus DeSieno for being selected for CENTER’s Project Launch Grant recognizing his project, Geography of Disappearance: Migrant Deaths on the US/Mexico Border.  The Project Launch Grant supports a complete or nearly completed documentary or fine art series. The grant provides financial support and platforms for professional development opportunities for one photographer. The Grant includes a $5,000 cash award, Review Santa Fe participation, Publication in LENSCRATCH, Professional Development Seminars access, inclusion in CENTER’s printed Program Guide, inclusion in a Group Exhibition at CENTER, and inclusion in the CENTER Winners Gallery & Archive.

Juror Diane Waggoner, Curator, Department of Photographs, National Gallery of Art shares her thoughts on the selection:

It was truly an honor reviewing the many compelling submissions for this year’s Project Launch Grant. There were numerous standout projects that reaffirmed my belief in the power of photography to tell personal stories, process emotions, reveal hardships, and capture environments, communities, and ways of living. I was impressed with the thoughtfulness, skill, and dedication many of the photographers brought to their work.

Several of the submitted projects will stay with me, from those detailing grief and loss, exploring growing up and motherhood, examining particular communities across the globe, and engaging with the consequences of extraction, deforestation, and decaying infrastructure. There were wonderful studies of vanishing things, such as local newsrooms or payphones, and others bearing witness to suffering, such as animals in captivity in roadside zoos, maternal mortality in Africa and the U.S., the treatment of mental illness in Java, and the war in Ukraine.

To select just one project was truly a challenge. In the end, my selection is Geography of Disappearance, a powerful project that documents sites where the bodies of migrants have been found after perishing during an attempt to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. The use of wet-collodion negatives in the field produces a picture seemingly awash in fluid and grime, evoking the lived experience of the lost person. The project addresses an urgent issue of our time with deep research and care and depicts a range of locations and compositions but is visually and conceptually cohesive.

Juror Bio:

Diane Waggoner is curator and acting head of the department of photographs at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. After earning a PhD in art history from Yale University, she joined the National Gallery in 2004, where she has organized or co-curated numerous exhibitions, including The Art of the American Snapshot, 1888–1978 (2007), The Pre-Raphaelite Lens: British Photography and Painting, 1848–1875 (2010), Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Art and Design, 1848–1900 (2013), East of the Mississippi: Nineteenth-Century American Landscape Photography (2017), and James Van Der Zee’s Photographs: A Portrait of Harlem (2021). In 2020, she published the monograph Lewis Carroll’s Photography and Modern Childhood (Princeton University Press). Her current project, Beneath the Surface: Mining and American Photography, co-curated with Kristen Gaylord, Herzfeld Curator of Photography and New Media Arts at the Milwaukee Museum of Art, will be on view at the National Gallery, May 23-August 23, 2026.

©Marcus DeSieno, Unknown Migrant Female Cause of Death Other Multiple Injuries Their Body Was Found One Day After Death Arizona , from Geography of Disappearance: Migrant Deaths on the US/Mexico Border

Geography of Disappearance: Migrant Deaths on the US/Mexico Border

The United Nations has declared the border between the United States and Mexico to be the deadliest land crossing in the world and a humanitarian crisis. Thousands of men, women, and children have died crossing the over 1,900 mile border through brutal deserts and impassible mountains with harsh climate conditions year-round. The US government strategically uses draconian policies here that follow a philosophy of “prevention through deterrence,” forcefully directing migrants into unforgiving terrain where they wander for days in the elements. These policies are specifically meant to maim and kill. Many of these migrants are sometimes never found as they die in the vast emptiness of the wilderness. The earth reclaims their bodies, and they disappear. Nature is used as an executioner by proxy.

I photograph along the border and go to the exact locations where the bodies of unknown migrants have been recovered using autopsy reports and data collected by humanitarian organizations as well as local and state police. I use alternative photographic processes in the darkroom to speak to the complex social and political narratives that run through these landscapes. The hazy, impressionistic, and forceful mark-making embedded in these photographic processes act as a metaphor for the physical and psychological violence that these migrants experienced as they perished.

These sites of death are the direct consequences of the oppressive ideologies, build upon a legacy of white supremacy, that continue to guide the United States forward into the 21st century. The photographs act as a space for somber remembrance of the deceased and serve as an examination of the cruelty woven into the fabric of my country.

MEDIUM & SIZES
These photographs are printed for exhibition as archival pigment print enlargements of lith prints made from wet-plate collodion negatives. I exhibit them at two sized editions at 14″x18″ and 28″x36″

©Marcus DeSieno, Unknown Migrant Male Cause of Death Exposure Probable Hyperthermia Their Body Was Found Three Weeks After Death Arizona, 2025, from Geography of Disappearance: Migrant Deaths on the US/Mexico Border

Marcus DeSieno is a visual artist whose work interrogates institutions of power through the language and materiality of photography. His practice focuses on documenting the enduring legacies of American empire, surveillance, and how visual technology is used as a tool of oppression by the State. DeSieno often uses experimental and historic analog photographic processes to create conversations between power and history. He is Assistant Professor of Photography at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida.

DeSieno’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at the Aperture Foundation in New York, Paris Photo, The Benaki Museum in Athens, Greece, The Finnish Museum of Photography in Helsinki, Finland, and various other galleries and museums. His work has also been featured in a variety of publications including The British Journal of Photography, The Boston Globe, FeatureShoot, GUP Magazine, Hyperallergic, Huffington Post, National Geographic, PDN, Slate, Smithsonian Magazine, The Washington Post, and Wired. His first monograph, No Man’s Land: Views From a Surveillance State, was published by Daylight Books.

Instagram: @marcusdesieno

©Marcus DeSieno, Unknown Migrant Female Cause of Death Probable Hyperthermia Their Body Was Found Less Than One Week After Death California, 2025, from Geography of Disappearance: Migrant Deaths on the US/Mexico Border

©Marcus DeSieno, Unknown Migrant Male Cause of Death Undetermined Postmortem Decomposition Their Body Was Found Three Weeks After Death Arizona, 2021, from Geography of Disappearance: Migrant Deaths on the US/Mexico Border

©Marcus DeSieno, Unknown Migrant Female Cause of Death Drowning Their Body Was Found on the Day of Death Texas, 2024, from Geography of Disappearance: Migrant Deaths on the US/Mexico Border

©Marcus DeSieno, Unknown Migrant Male Cause of Death Blunt Force TraumaStruck by Automobile Their Body Was Found on the Day of Death California, 2025 , from Geography of Disappearance: Migrant Deaths on the US/Mexico Border

©Marcus DeSieno, Unknown Migrant Male Cause of Death Undetermined Skeletal Remains Their Body Was Found Six Months After Death Arizona, 2024 , from Geography of Disappearance: Migrant Deaths on the US/Mexico Border

©Marcus DeSieno, Unknown Migrant Female Cause of Death Probable Hyperthermia Their Body Was Found Three Weeks After Death Arizona, 2022 , from Geography of Disappearance: Migrant Deaths on the US/Mexico Border

©Marcus DeSieno, Unknown Migrant Male Cause of Death Undetermined Skeletal Remains Their Body Was Found Three Months After Death Arizona , from Geography of Disappearance: Migrant Deaths on the US/Mexico Border

©Marcus DeSieno, Unknown Migrant Female Cause of Death Probable Exposure Their Body Was Found One Month After Death New Mexico, 2024, from Geography of Disappearance: Migrant Deaths on the US/Mexico Border

©Marcus DeSieno, Unknown Migrant Male Cause of Death Drowning Their Body Was Found One Week After Death California, 2024, from Geography of Disappearance: Migrant Deaths on the US/Mexico Border

©Marcus DeSieno, Unknown Migrant Male Cause of Death Undetermined Mummified and Partially Skeletonized Remains Their Body Was Found Three Weeks After Death Arizona, 2023, from Geography of Disappearance: Migrant Deaths on the US/Mexico Border

©Marcus DeSieno, Unknown Migrant Male Cause of Death Undetermined Skeletal Remains Complete Skeletonization with Bone Degradation Their Body Was Found Over Six Months After Death Arizona, 2025, from Geography of Disappearance: Migrant Deaths on the US/Mexico Border

©Marcus DeSieno, Unknown Migrant Male Cause of Death Blunt Force Injury Multiple Severe Injuries to Head Torso and Extremities Their Body Was Found Less Than One Day After Death Arizona, 2022, from Geography of Disappearance: Migrant Deaths on the US/Mexico Border