Michelle Frankfurter
Destino
February 3–28, 2016
“I seek to capture the experience of people who struggle to control their own destiny when confronted by extreme circumstances."
Destino captures in striking black-and-white the perilous journey of Central American migrants as they make their way toward the U.S.-Mexico border in hopes of finding work, and ultimately, a better life in the United States. Between 2012 and 2014, the artist joined some of these travelers as they moved across the land on the tops of trains, braving the natural elements as well as violence and exploitation at the hands of smugglers, drug cartels, and corrupt law enforcement. Now, in 2016, due to the continued demand for drugs in the United States and oppressive international trade policies, more and more young people from Central America continue to make their way north to reunite with family already living in the U.S. and to escape drug and gang-related violence, domestic abuse, and poverty at home. Through her series, Frankfurter brings this overwhelming crisis of migration into focus, revealing in the faces of those she photographs poignant stories of hardship, bravery, and perseverance.
Born in Jerusalem, Michelle Frankfurter is a documentary photographer currently living in Takoma Park, Maryland. She graduated from Syracuse University with a bachelor’s degree in English and her work has been published and exhibited worldwide. Before settling in the Washington, DC area, Frankfurter spent three years living in Nicaragua, where she worked as a stringer for the British news agency, Reuters, and with the human rights organization, Witness For Peace, documenting the effects of the contra war on civilians. In 1995, a long-term project on Haiti earned her two World Press Photo awards. Since 2000, Frankfurter has concentrated on the border region between the United States and Mexico and on themes of migration. She is a 2013 winner of the Aaron Siskind Foundation grant, a 2011 Top 50 Critical Mass winner, a finalist for the 2011 Aftermath Project and the 2012 Foto Evidence Book Award for her project Destino.