Running Fence

Rating:
Summary: Powerful Witness
Review: Running Fence, with its ironic reference to Christo's famous California art project, is one of those books that will be looked at in 50 to 100 years in wonder. It shows with utter clarity the incoherence and brutality of the US-Mexico border, without in any way resorting to the usual journalistic cliches. The border has all the strange transparency of the early days of the American West. This is the last frontier, seen from both sides, and rendered as a new kind of landscape photography. The light is hot and dusty, the fence a weird, expedient barrier that fits uneasily into a harsh landscape. It starts in the ocean and ends in the otay mountains, with a kind of no mans land on the US side, and a crazy patchwork of factories and home-made houses on the other. Is this what NAFTA is all about?

Rating:
Summary: Powerful Witness
Review: Running Fence, with its ironic reference to Christo's famous California art project, is one of those books that will be looked at in 50 to 100 years in wonder. It shows with utter clarity the incoherence and brutality of the US-Mexico border, without in any way resorting to the usual journalistic cliches. The border has all the strange transparency of the early days of the American West. This is the last frontier, seen from both sides, and rendered as a new kind of landscape photography. The light is hot and dusty, the fence a weird, expedient barrier that fits uneasily into a harsh landscape. It starts in the ocean and ends in the otay mountains, with a kind of no mans land on the US side, and a crazy patchwork of factories and home-made houses on the other. Is this what NAFTA is all about?