{"id":32697,"date":"2025-09-20T04:59:19","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T04:59:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/32697\/"},"modified":"2025-09-20T04:59:19","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T04:59:19","slug":"arturo-soto-on-memory-personal-history-and-the-politics-of-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/32697\/","title":{"rendered":"Arturo Soto on memory, personal history and the politics of place"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In his book Border Documents, the photographer and writer draws on his father\u2019s anecdotes and his own images to challenge preconceptions of the Mexico-US border<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEvery first kiss had to happen somewhere,\u201d reflects photographer and writer Arturo Soto. \u201cMapping memory onto geography is something we all do constantly, albeit in intangible ways. I want to create a body of work that highlights the emotional dimension of urban environments.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>With his latest book, Border Documents, Soto pairs his father\u2019s recollections of life on the US-Mexico border with his own images of neighbouring cities Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez and El Paso. Part memoir, part political study, it\u2019s a disarmingly profound work that asks what happens when personal stories are laid against one of the world\u2019s most contested frontiers.<\/p>\n<p>The book\u2019s origins lie in the stories Soto grew up hearing at home. His father\u2019s repertoire of anecdotes \u2013 some comic, some harrowing, all steeped in the texture of border life \u2013 formed the foundation of the project. But turning oral tradition into written text was not a straightforward task. \u201cI had heard most of the stories since I was little,\u201d Soto recalls. \u201cThe first step was to identify those that had a personal, sociopolitical and spatial dimension.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-259533 size-full lazyload\" alt=\"\" width=\"1800\" height=\"1200\" data-img-id=\"259533\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Arturo_Soto_Border_Documents_ID.jpg\"  data-\/>Passport photos from Border Documents; All images \u00a9 Arturo Soto\/The Eriskay Connection<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t \tSign in <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In his book Border Documents, the photographer and writer draws on his father\u2019s anecdotes and his own images&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32698,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[489,156,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-32697","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}