Brian Orozco
I was raised by two working-class immigrants from Mexico. Growing up in Portland, I watched ordinary parts of their everyday life--driving to work, filling out forms, opening the front door--become political acts. Informed by their presence and personal memory of my upbringing in the United States, my photographic practice investigates notions of citizenship, home, and belonging.
By making pictures, I evidence of our unresolved American yearning: my neighborhood's unkempt empty lots teeming with invisible potential; deferred dreams of purchasing a picket-fenced single-family home; I.C.E. officers knocking on front doors; burial sites in homelands visited for the first time.
In the project Living Rooms (2017 - ongoing), I photograph American scenes and landscapes alongside the home of my immediate and extended family in the United States. These photographs describe the aspirations and terrors of the economic, racial, and migrant swath of people from whom I have emerged.