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Abstract
Drift Alignment is an ongoing body of work that engages the complex and contested history of the US-Mexico border through the practices of astrophotography and celestial navigation. My primary motivation for this work has been an examination of both the material and ideological conditions that led to the formation of the border, as well as its lasting relationship with colonialism, and the tragic consequences of immigration enforcement. Throughout the series, works oscillate between attempts at precision and its inverse — both subjective experience and mathematical error — to build a more poetic understanding of the region and its inhabitants.
Photographic and video works in the series are based on a combination of archival information related to the border surveys during the mid-nineteenth century, eighteenth century Spanish missionary activity, and contemporary GIS data for migrant deaths in southern Arizona. Other work was produced during extended visits to sites that are tied to my past and present connection with the border, as well as historically significant locations that point to the shifting ways of perceiving and understanding of the lands of the American southwest.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Correction Statement
This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1. Schlereth, Celestial Navigation in a Nutshell, 9–11.
2. For a detailed description of the process, see Alan Macrobert’s description of drift polar alignment in Sky and Telescope.
3. Rebert, La Gran Línea, 27–30. See also the firsthand accounts and astronomical measurements contained within the Emory Report on the United States and Mexican boundary survey: made under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior.
4. Kitt Peak National Observatory, located within the sovereign lands of the Tohono O’Odham Nation is within the Baboquivari Mountains, approximately 50 north of the US-Mexico border.
5. De León and Wells, “The Land of Open Graves,” 201.
6. The Humane Borders Migrant Death Mapping website contains the publicly available archive of migrant deaths in southern Arizona.
7. De León and Wells, “The Land of Open Graves,” 80–81.
8. Rebert, La Gran Línea, 28–30.
9. Ibid., 128–29.
10. Font, “The Anza Expedition of 1775–1776,” 7–9, 15. See also, the interactive maps of the trail maintained by the National Parks Service which include campsites of the expedition as well as Font’s journal entries.
11. Charlot et al. “The 3rd Realization of the International Celestial Reference Frame (ICRF3).”
12. NASA’s Space Geodesy program based at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland coordinates VLBI measurements that contribute to the ICRF and its role in calibrating GPS and other Earth observation satellites.
13. Rebert, La Gran Línea, 8–9.
14. Storms, Reconnaissance in Sonora, 3–4.
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Andrew O’Brien
Andrew O’Brien is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. O’Brien’s artistic practice draws from lived experience to examine the organization and perception of physical space — especially as it relates to landscape and the built environment. His work is informed by the history and symbolic potential of materials, as well as the shifting incarnations of the photographic image. Works range from experimental publications, to photographs, video, and installation. He has exhibited widely, including at the Houston Center for Photography, The Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins, Colorado, the West Gallery at California State University Northridge, and the Art Museum of Northern Illinois University, among others. In 2021 O’Brien was named a Tennessee Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellow.