This series, “The Myth of the West,” is inspired by three things: my recent move to Arizona, the influence of western movies on my perception of the southwest, and the political battle over illegal immigration.
My perception of the southwest was largely shaped by western movies. As a child, I spent countless Saturday afternoons watching the Cowboys and Indians on my television fighting over land. These movies portrayed the heroic cowboy -- the cowboy as an icon of American culture -- celebrated for colonizing new territories and protecting frontier towns. In western movies, the cowboy was never called the “immigrant” or the “invader.” The cowboy was entitled to the land.
I moved to Arizona during an election year, and again found myself watching cowboys on television. They were politicians in cowboy hats. They stood in canyons and ranches that belonged to Mexico less than two centuries ago, and vowed to protect this land from a so-called “invasion” of illegal immigrants.
The hysteria over illegal immigration is a frustrating thing to me. Many Americans are no more than a few generations removed from immigrants. Most will argue their ancestors were different, because they came here legally. Yet, many of our ancestors participated in a ruthless invasion, aimed at overthrowing a population that called Arizona home for thousands of years.
When I was a child, I replayed movies with my toys. It was my way of making sense of the world presented to me through popular culture. I do so again in my photographs, but this time I challenge the assumptions set forth in the movies and television shows from my childhood. I use my toys to question history and the sense of entitlement that served as the basis for America’s iconic western movies.