Walker Dawson
San Francisco, CA, USA
Walker Dawson is a freelance photojournalist and documentary videographer. His recent work includes documenting anti-FIFA riots in Brazil during the World Cup, Mennonites colonies of rural Paraguay, gold mining in the Peruvian Andes, and the continuing Mexican drug war. He began his global travels with a high school exchange to Argentina, an internship with a human rights lawyer at the United Nations in Geneva, and assisted photographer Robert Dawson on numerous projects including environmental and political issues in Guatemala and Iceland. He contributed logistical planning, demographic research, and a chapter for the best selling book The Public Library: A Photographic Essay. Walker is also the cofounder of Breaking Borders, a social and political travel blog dedicated to telling stories that are off the beaten path. He holds a BA in Global Studies and Chinese from the New School University in New York.
- Breaking news
- Crisis
- Interview
- Landscape
- Portrait
- Reporting
- Video capture
War and Migration: Life on the Mexican Frontier
Walker Dawson
In a summer of anti-Mexican rhetoric, dramatic drug lord jailbreaks and an international migration crisis, I traveled by train and bus across northern Mexico to see what the real story was. I wanted to go beyond the anger and the divisive language to understand the context of the debate. Some politicians in the United States are proposing that we build a wall along our borders, yet Donald Trump has gone as far as to call Mexicans rapists and murderers. On the other hand some political leaders have pointed to the success of NAFTA in facilitating the growth of the middle class in Mexico and reducing the poverty that fuels the crime and the desire to emigrate. These images provide a context for understanding the debate in our country.
