CACHANILLA.

Cachanilla: what Mexicali residents call themselves, named for a hardy desert shrub native to the valley’s alkaline soil. This series portraits that identity—workers, families, street vendors, everyday life in a border corridor U.S. maps barely note but that sustains millions.

Mexicali sits opposite Calexico, California—two cities joined and split by a wall. The division is mostly administrative: culture, blood, labor, and food flow across regardless. Cachanilla isn’t about the border as wound or politics; it’s about people living there as home.

The project has no end. Each return reveals what was unseen before: a new mural, a closed restaurant, an aging face. That accumulation is the point.