I am the proud daughter of Mexican immigrants. My work is a devotion to the stories and sacrifices that are often left invisible, erased, or undervalued in American life. I am documenting what it means to survive as both commodity and ghost, to be essential and unseen, to inherit a legacy of labor, fear, and hope. This series is an act of witness, a translation of memory, and a refusal to let my family’s labor, and the labor of millions, fade into silence. Each photograph is a constructed metaphor: a boot on a scale, weighing “nothing” yet valued at billions; a farmworker’s uniform, vacuum-sealed and labeled for sale; a skull made from strawberries, slowly rotting under the weight of pesticides and the promise of a better life; a woven border of my mother’s residency card and the pesos she carried across; my father’s portrait, frozen at nineteen, the age he migrated to this country and left everything behind. In The Labyrinth of Labor, the maze becomes a metaphor for the immigrant condition, no clear entrance, no exit, just endless paths designed to keep workers trapped in cycles of low-wage, backbreaking labor. Survival becomes the only way forward, as parents remain stuck in oppressive jobs to create opportunities they may never experience themselves. The series also reflects on the children of immigrants. In Translation Fatigue, a worn bilingual dictionary sits among broken pencils and government forms. A quiet but heavy testimony to the children who became their parents’ translators, carrying adult responsibilities far too young. My father, and many in my family, tried to learn English not to belong, but to avoid humiliation at work, an experience still far too common. I grew up aware of the shame, fear, and silence that language barriers create. In my digitally manipulated job listing image, I expose the casual cruelty of economic privilege, where survival jobs are paraded as opportunities while those who perform them remain unseen. It asks viewers to confront their own privilege and the transactional nature of labor in America. Through these images, I ask: What is the cost of staying, especially in a country where you are not wanted? Who gets to cross? How much is a life worth when the work is done but the name is forgotten? This series is for those who crossed, those who stayed, and those of us still living in the space between. It is for the children of immigrants—the first-generation cycle-breakers who are living out our ancestors’ wildest dreams while carrying their unspoken burdens. It is for those who become the bridge, the hope, the living archive.
