Sun City

Made in El Paso, Texas on Thanksgiving weekend of 2023, these pictures document aspects of community life in El Paso. Home to one of the nation’s largest military bases and located on the U.S.-Mexico border, El Paso is a unique cultural place, distinct from the other Texan cities both in its diverse heritage as a long-standing place of exchange and crossing and its striking basin and range landscape.

Focused primarily on the El Paso Thanksgiving Day Parade, the collection offers a diverse array of portraits depicting the city’s community dynamics. Additionally, it showcases the vernacular architecture and desert mountains that define El Paso.

My father and his siblings were born and raised in the Sun City, as El Paso is known. It is where my grandmother lives and my grandfather rests. Though I didn’t grow up there, I’ve been drawn to it throughout my life, even living there briefly. I enjoy driving by the house my grandmother was raised in, the high school my grandfather attended, and the places my dad hung out as a teenager; my roots are in this desert city and making work about it is important to me. I aimed to capture not only the stories my father often shared but also to explore the social and political aspects inherent to a city like El Paso.

Gabriela Moreno is a visual artist currently pursuing a BFA in Photography and Communication Design from Texas State University. 

Born in Texas and raised in Vermont, much of her work focuses on her mixed raced identity and the investigation of the differences in cultures between the opposite borders of which her parents were raised on.