Looking at murals in El Paso

In 2017 I got copy of the out of print book Colors on Desert Walls: The Murals of El Paso. The book is a vivid artifact and field guide to the region's most visible form of public art.

(I’m not affiliated with the authors, Miguel Juarez and Cynthia Weber Farah).

At the time the book was already twenty years old. Curious about how the murals were faring due to real estate development and age, I used Google to map the murals and see how they’d changed through captures on Google Street View, which surfaces images from years prior.

Almost like looking for treasure, I tried to make photographs of as many as I could, in person, in El Paso and Sunland Park, New Mexico. Now the original images in the book are closer to thirty years old, while the murals themselves are even older.

One of the most straightforward and durable ways to communicate stories and transfer information is basically low tech. There is no barrier to viewing public art. In other words, no login, no password, no expired compatibility, no subscription fee, and no manipulative algorithm. Low tech is often the most sophisticated way. The symbols do the coding.