Atascosa Borderlands

Atascosa Borderlands is a transdisciplinary storytelling project by photographer Luke Swenson and naturalist Jack Dash. The project developed out of a comprehensive botanical flora of a 203,799 acre section of the Coronado National Forest in southern Arizona known as the Atascosa Highlands.

Since 2017, the project has worked with over 80 community members bridging social and political divides: ecologists, environmental conservationists, cattle ranchers, humanitarian aid workers, migrants, deer hunters, ex-border patrol agents, and indigenous community members. Atascosa Borderlands seeks to move beyond the politicized approaches found in mass media to showcase the profound, and often contradictory experiences of the Borderlands, bringing to the fore the voices of a broad spectrum of residents who can speak directly to the challenges these communities are facing.

This project brings together hundreds of original film photographs, oral history interviews, botanical specimens, historical images, and found objects in the form of an interactive website; creating a living archive dedicated to this remote 42-mile section of the US-Mexico border.

Join childhood friends Luke and Jack as they tell us about the origins of their project, and their experiences working along the Arizona-Sonora border. Together, this collaborative duo will share photographs, stories, and personal experiences from this biologically and culturally diverse region. Giving us insight into what there is to lose in the Arizona-Sonora Borderlands if action is not taken to heal the biological and cultural rifts which threaten these communities and landscapes.