Desire Lines

First Edition
Softcover, 17 × 22.5 cm
208 pages
Section sewn, OTA-bound with printed paper covers, two inserts
170 photographs, satellite maps and archival images
Overlapse 2023

Desire Lines follows old and new movements through the desert landscape of the Sonoran borderlands of the United States and Mexico: paths taken by migrants and border agents, missionaries and conquistadors, indigenous people and industrialists. The messy and at times violent collision of peoples has created a region that defies the harmfully simplistic narratives so frequently attributed to our borders.

Shipley’s photographs focus on the disorienting experience of this landscape – a place of beauty or danger depending on the perspective of those moving through it. Deceptively empty, the landscape is under constant watch, heavily surveilled and controlled, with an ever-increasing military presence that has seeped into the lives of residents in surrounding communities.