Migrant Artifacts: Magic and Loss in the Sonoran Desert

By Michael Hyatt
Eye to I series, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-9798631-2-7

Migrant Artifacts: Magic and Loss in the Sonoran Desert bears witness to one of the world’s most dangerous journeys: the migratory passage of thousands of undocumented workers north across the Arizona-Sonora border. Michael Hyatt’s unsettling perspective frames the perilous trek through images of things left behind—artifacts of a journey that has become one of the most controversial issues in today’s national and international political debate.

Hyatt’s stark black-and-white photographs—a child’s sun-bleached dress, an American Eagle backpack lying on the parched earth, an abandoned religious icon, a copy of El Diaro de Ana Frank with the pages blowing in the desert wind—tell a poignant story of the people who have hazarded this often fatal trip. The faces are unseen, yet these unforgettable images show us a vibrant humanity in the discarded remnants of desperate lives, even as we confront the brooding mystery of a fate unknown.