Hey guys, hope you having a great day wherever you are. I recently had a really interesting

conversation with photographer Joel Grimes. He recently visited Tijuana where thousands have traveled

to potentially seek asylum in America. In fact, an estimated 6,000 Central Americans walking in

caravans reached Tijuana late last fall, and another 1,000 are currently heading to the U.S.

border from Honduras. But it's not just Central Americans in these camps. Thousands from Haiti

traveled to the U.S. southern border in 2016, hoping to seek asylum.

Joel provided a rare opportunity to speak to someone outside the political debate,

who observed what's happening on a small sliver of the border through a very unique perspective,

the perspective of an artist behind his camera.

Here are his thoughts after spending three days

photographing in Tijuana. Describe some of the work that you've done in the past for someone

that hasn't seen your portfolio. Well, I do commercial advertising and that's the billboards,

the ads you see. That's kind of what I do. That's where I get my basic money. Um, but I always have projects on the side that, uh, sort of, uh, I guess you'd say

are in the interest of the humanity side of, of just life. I've been to over 50 countries, uh,

from client work and, uh, just traveling the world and seen a lot. When the opportunity

came up for me to go down to Tijuana, originally that wasn't my goal. It was to go to

Waxaca and photograph the workers and the fields and with people down in that region.

So, but this person Jordan said, well, I'm going down to Tijuana to bring tents and clothing and whatever to the refugees.

Maybe that would be a good start and a good, you know, just a trial run.

And let me just stop it. So Jordan is someone that you sort of met through your work and you've sort of tried to collaborate with him.

He could translate or be an interpreter for you for some of the work that you'd like to do in Mexico.

And so he says, hey, I'm going to do this work for my church. You know, do you want to come with me?

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