THE SET IS SIMPLE: a little fabric, a chair,
maybe some flowers. Its inhabitants are
more complex: an American mother who
takes her children to visit their Mexican
father every weekend. A recent deportee
trying to rebuild his life. They pause what
they’re doing, sit for a portrait, and leave
with a printed copy. Behind the camera is
Alexia Webster, a South African photogra-
pher who sets up street studios around the
world. At Studio Transfronterizo, her project
in Tijuana, Mexico, passing characters offer
a glimpse of life on the world’s busiest land
border. ¶ Every day nearly 100,000 people—
commuters, students, visitors—legally cross
from Tijuana to San Diego, California, at the
San Ysidro border. Webster built her first
studio in Tijuana near a café where new
arrivals often stop for legal advice and a
free lunch. She set up a half dozen more in
the city: at a migrant shelter, on the beach
where the border fence ends, in the Undoc-
umented Café near the binational Friend-
ship Park. ¶ Passersby who asked what she
was doing often sat for a portrait. Lourdes
Santiago González posed with her
daughter, Brenda. She’d arrived
decades earlier with her family to
cross the border but after multiple
failed attempts had stayed in
Tijuana. At each set, lines of people
waited: a former gang member
deported from California. A celeb-
rity impersonator performing on
the nightclub circuit. Migrants
from Honduras and El Salvador en
route to the United States.
Nine-year-old Jaime Preciado
nudged his dad onto the set. He
wanted to “have a memory of us
together” before his father went
back to California.
More than a decade ago Webster
was photographing for the United
Nations in a refugee camp in Kenya
when a man told her he’d watched
photographers visit for 15 years but
didn’t have a single picture of him-
self or his family. Webster thought
of a studio shot of her grandpar-
ents with her mom as a child soon
after they emigrated from Greece to
South Africa. “It’s the most precious
photograph I own,” she says. “It’s
a connection to who I am.” Many
of Webster’s subjects had fled war,
leaving personal archives behind.
One photo could help them rebuild.
In 2011, with a printer and a tem-
porary portrait studio on a corner
in Cape Town, Webster invited peo-
ple to pose for a free session. She
printed their picture on the spot.
“Primarily it’s for them, for their
kids, their grandkids, their lovers,
their friends,” she says. “It’s a record
of who they are.” Webster has since
put up studios in other places, from
the streets of Mumbai, India, to a
refugee camp in South Sudan.
She gives few instructions from
behind the camera. “The idea of
the project is for people to rebuild
their archive and reaffirm their
identity,” Webster says. “I like for
them to determine how they want
their photo to be. How do you want
to be represented?” jA
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