Byron Brauchli: Traditional photographic techniques in dialogue with current ones

▲ Lobatos Bridge, a steel structure that crosses a river with a mountainous landscape located on the Rio Grande, in Colorado, United States. Photo courtesy of the photographer

Eirinet Gómez

La Jornada Newspaper, Tuesday, June 10, 2025, p. 2

In the midst of the digital age, photographer and graphic artist Byron Brauchli reclaims 19th-century techniques such as heliogravure, cyanotype, and handmade paper printing, convinced that these alternative historical processes connect with contemporary creative pursuits.

Although young people don't know how to do them technically, they often apply them with their filters, choosing a purple or a reddish hue. There are even buttons on Instagram that allow them to give these effects to their photos. Ultimately, everything they do is somewhat similar to what people tried to do with chemicals in the early 19th century , he commented.

In an interview with La Jornada, in the context of the presentation of his exhibition Recorridos, at the Ramón Alva de la Canal gallery, in Xalapa, Veracruz, Brauchli stressed that the important thing is for young people to be able to conceptually justify why they use a certain filter or effect: what intention is behind pushing the cyanotype button on Instagram, or any other resource .

Resurgence of techniques

Brauchli felt there is a resurgence of these processes, which he considers highly valuable. “Heliogravure is a photographic process that involves five generations of an image. It starts with a digital file that is printed on acetate, then transferred to a copper plate using a carbon-gelatin technique, which is then chemically etched to form a gravure plate. Finally, it is printed with a press on cotton paper and intaglio ink.

It is a handcrafted graphic process that uses paper and colored inks, which in turn gives us many options to express our concerns through different ways of viewing the image.

These techniques are present in the exhibition Recorridos, which brings together 75 pieces, including photographs of the upper reaches of the Colorado River, the southern Rio Grande—from an area of ​​Silverton, Colorado, to Bagdad Beach in Matamoros, Tamaulipas—as well as rivers in Veracruz and the Usumacinta, on the border between Chiapas and Guatemala.

"The images are part of several photography projects—carried out with support from the National System of Creators—in which, more than landscapes or rivers, I wanted to capture deforestation and overexploitation of aquatic ecosystems," Brauchli said.

He emphasized that during the curatorial process, led by Laura González Flores, a specialist in critical studies of photography and contemporary art, the migration theme of the project emerged more clearly.

Laura gave it a rather beautiful, interesting twist, one that had never occurred to me, because my interpretation of my images was more about the environment. But when I talked about my personal story—the migration of my grandparents, my parents, and myself—the topic came up, which led to a critical essay , he explained.

Old school artist

Byron Brauchli considers himself an old-school photographer, capturing his images with his film camera, and making his prints using processes such as cyanotype, etching, and heliogravure. They are also printed on handmade paper from Oaxaca and from the Ceiba Gráfica workshop in Coatepec, Veracruz.

He mentioned that through this combination of techniques and materials, he seeks to vindicate the legacy of photographers like William Henry Jackson, whose images influenced the creation of national parks in United States territories that were formerly Mexican in the 19th century, and who also used these printing methods.

Brauchli highlighted the fundamental role of photography in the elaboration of environmental and social memory. We construct a landscape, in my case, a somewhat atrocious one. I have documented what happens with dams, reservoirs that bury or drown communities. Such is the case of Guerrero Viejo, in Tamaulipas, which was submerged when the Falcon Dam was built in the 20th century on the Rio Grande, and the population had to relocate to Guerrero Nuevo .

In a setting like Xalapa, with such a rich artistic tradition, presenting Recorridos is an honor for Brauchli. He recalled that Carlos Jurado, a member of the Institute of Plastic Arts, promoted the creation of the Alva de la Canal gallery and was a proponent of historical techniques. It's an honor to continue collaborating with this fundamental tradition and with the first photography program on a national scale .

For Brauchli, photography not only documents but also challenges: it reveals the traces of environmental transformation, human displacement, and the voids left by violence. "Recorridos" was presented in the context of the 40th anniversary of the Ramón Alva de la Canal gallery and the 2025 International University Book Fair, and will remain on view until August.

▲ Santa Elena Canyon, in Big Bend National Park in Texas, USA. Photo courtesy of the photographer.

Hermann Bellinghausen

La Jornada Newspaper, Tuesday, June 10, 2025, p. 3

Despite Donald Trump's imperial delusions, and even those against him, there exists a vast territory, poorly understood but excessively mythologized: the border between Mexico and the United States. It is much more than a line on maps, more than the Colorado and Bravo rivers (called the Grande by Texans), more than the cities of fear and violence, more than the swarms of migrants stranded in camps bumping up against walls and fences. If one views it geographically and socially, one can think of a third country , as has already been suggested. It has not lacked surveyors, photographers, journalists, musicians, and literary storytellers.

On the American side, obsessive witnesses of the border country come to mind, such as Cormac McCarthy, Ry Cooder, Charles Bowden, and William T. Vollmann. To this list, we must add Byron Brauchli, a photographer and visual artist long based in Xalapa, Veracruz, who, among other projects, has developed an intimate record of a grandiose landscape north of the line of destinies shared between his two countries. The book Recorridos (Travels), and the exhibition of the same name in the Veracruz capital, which opened on May 31 at the Ramón Alva de la Canal gallery, place themselves far from the aforementioned hectic registers. In fact, it is an experience that refers us to the American landscape symphonist Ansel Adams, albeit in a deliberately minor key.

It doesn't portray people, but places. Each section of the tour is preceded by a map. We go from Colorado (north and south) to New Mexico and its border with Texas, to the Texas-Tamaulipas border. But as researcher Laura González-Flores writes in her well-documented prologue, maps and photographs say as much, if not more, about those who produced them than about the territory they depict .

What is a territory and to whom does it belong? The Indigenous reality of Mexico, and even more tragically that of the United States, teaches us that people and territory are (or were) one. Past Spanish and British colonialism, as well as that of both nation states, have operated against them. Dramatically, Brauchli's journeys take place in territories that were once Mexico until, through an unjust and unequal war, they were invaded by the country to the north and today constitute a vast portion of its territory.

It lacks the maniacal microscopic vision of Imperial, Vollmann's formidable 1,344-page tome dedicated solely to a region of Southern California. Nor does it possess the harrowing observation of Bowden, who, after witnessing life and death in Chihuahua, shattered his body and soul. He returned to poetic gaze in his beloved deserts of Chihuahua and Arizona, although his heart finally burst in 2014; he was never able to leave Juárez, despite his final work , Dreamland: The Way Out of Juárez.

Brauchli's journey is slow, devoid of human presence, almost lyrical, and highly personal. As González-Flores points out, this book brings together several observers in one: geographer, naturalist scientist, mountaineer, romantic traveler, artist, meditator, migrant. And photographer: of mountains, valleys, trees, riverbanks, and beaches (specifically Bagdad, Tamaulipas, on the border with the swamps of Las Palomas, Texas).

The artisanal spirit of his plates is no small feat. Invoking Carlos Jurado, he recovers techniques from the old photographic century, swept away by the digital tide and now by artificial intelligence. They are solitary journeys through the often desolate nature of the southern United States that so fascinates Wim Wenders. Beneath Brauchli's peaceful landscapes and settings lie the disputes over the waters of the Colorado and the human sovereignty of the Bravo, rivers he follows from their northern sources. The former to its squeaky outlet in Baja California, and the latter tracing the strange border line of the Bravo, the tomb of migrants and murdered men and women.

Brauchli doesn't seek blood; he stays with the soil, the stone, the water, the strenuous vegetation of this third country, inhabited by Mexicans and Americans, intertwined beyond the new Trumpian xenophobia and the criminal decay on both sides. The book reiterates the presence of bridges: that may be the hidden message of Such Personal Journeys .