JTF (just the facts): Co-published in 2025 by Loose Joints (here) and Fundación MAPFRE (in Spanish). Section-sewn debossed hardcover with tipped-on image (240 × 295 mm), 168 pages, with 61 color plates and 7 pages of color film stills. Includes texts by Victoria del Val, Dominick Bermúdez, Alejandra Aragon, and Albert Corbí, and an image list. Design by Loose Joints Studio. (Cover and spread shots below.)
An exhibition of this body of work was held at the Fundación MAPFRE (Barcelona) from February 15 to May 19, 2025, and at the Fundación MAPFRE (Madrid) from June 5 to August 24, 2025 (here).
Comments/Context: In the 21st century context of active migration driven by the pressures of politics, economics, conflict, and climate change (among other factors), the southern border between the United States and Mexico has become an increasingly contested zone of transition. Migrant flows have long moved back and forth across this border, much of which is delineated by the winding path of the Rio Grande river (called the Rio Bravo on the Mexican side) as it traverses wide expanses of desert, and communities on both sides of the borderlands have had to adapt to an ever changing framework of immigration and economic policies that try to separate legal from illegal within the larger crush of people fleeing a range of dangers further south.
Not surprisingly, many contemporary artists and photographers, from both sides of the border (and from elsewhere), have tried to wrestle with the stubborn complexities of this evolving (and intensifying) situation, many of late focusing on the efforts to build walls and crack down on illegal crossings as balanced by the increasing desperation of those still trying to find a new home. The story is so complex that no one artistic approach can ever really hope to encompass all of its subtleties and emotions, so that those who have taken on this challenging subject (including Zoe Leonard, Richard Misrach, and Cristina de Middel, among others) have typically crafted their own conceptual approaches to thinking about the larger situation, offering visual opportunities to understand not only the geography of the land itself, but the lives of people on both sides of the dividing line.
While most migration narratives are inherently about movement from one place to another, Felipe Romero Beltrán’s photobook Bravo is centered more on the paused action of waiting than on actually moving. Romero Beltrán has spent the past four years (since 2021) photographing along the Rio Bravo, entirely from the Mexican side of the border. His images (generally made near the town of Monterrey) feature none of the current migration themes typically drawn from the news headlines – no perilous journeys across the river or the unforgiving desert, no dramatic evasions of border patrol agents, and no walls, razor wire, or other physical impediments; even the river itself appears only fleetingly. Instead, his photographs document an extended period of stillness, where young people wait to go north (and then finally go presumably), the uneasy tensions of that in-between limbo state simmering throughout the atmosphere of his pictures. As a migrant himself, who was born in Colombia, educated in Argentina and Spain (and elsewhere), and is now living in France, Romero Beltrán likely has a particular appreciation for the uncertainties of living in hopeful transition, aiming his attention at communities and identities stuck in anticipation.
Bravo is divided into three sections of imagery, with Romero Beltrán smartly starting with the “Endings”, creating an unlikely inversion of expectations. Each photograph in this section features a sparse view of an essentially empty room – a bedroom, a kitchen, a bathroom, or some other space that was once inhabited but is now vacant, its tenants now gone and the place ready for its next round of transient visitors. In a larger story about the suspended time of migrants, these pictures document intermittent absence, but also the faint traces of ghostly presence. Romero Beltrán makes the most of the available textures, surfaces, and geometries, organizing compositions around the lines of room corners, mattresses, and curtains, with worn headboards, stained walls, mismatched furniture, and scavenged electrical outlets (now empty holes) providing the interchangeable elements of his spatial arrangements. Whether we see these spaces as dreary and dispiriting or perhaps even optimistic in some way (in that someone has recently moved on from here, hopefully northward, as seen in an abandoned painting with a finger pointed up) depends entirely on what we assume to have taken place.
The second section “Bodies” combines portraits of young migrants, both male and female, with a few still lifes of rocks, stones, shards of mirror, and other objects, as arranged in the domestic interiors we have already seen. Almost all of the young men are caught in quiet moments of repose (lying down, resting, or looking into the camera), most often shirtless which adds to the general feeling of vulnerability. These pictures are filled with an undercurrent of psychological unease, the waiting process taking its toll; some wait to cross, others wait for their parents to settle in the north before they try, others have recently failed and will soon give up and settle somewhere nearby or head back to where they started, each face etched with a mix of resilience, expectation, and weariness. While clearly staged, Romero Beltrán’s portraits don’t feel overtly performative, generally opting for the direct personal connection of trusted intimacy. The image titled “El Friki’s friend and pink wall” elegantly captures this introspective mood, with the young man peeking around the corner, to wherever his life might lead next, with a mixture of curiosity and wariness.
The final section of Bravo steps outside to survey the surrounding landscape of Monterrey, with Romero Beltrán’s eye drawn to “Breaches”, where the built environment gives way and opens a gap toward the river (and the border). Sadly, most of these views feel scarred and damaged in one way or another, from unfinished buildings and dry culverts to blackened walls and scraggly vacant lots. Train tracks end abruptly (with rusted train cars standing by idly), fences block access, paths cut through the overgrown greenery, and tire tracks lead off through the dust or down empty sun-baked streets, with a stray dog or a lone wanderer the only living presence to be seen. His choices offer a sense of implied hostility and violence, of a mistreated space that needs to be endured to actually get to the river. As if to combat the consistent muted grimness of this final section, Romero Beltrán has added a short appendix of film stills from his project “El Cruce” which recasts the river not as a place of crossing or transit, but as a flourishing destination in its own right, where people come to swim, fish, and even baptize new religious converts.
Romero Beltrán won the 2022 Aperture Portfolio Prize for his project “Dialect”, and Bravo is clearly a further step forward in terms of maturity and sophistication. What sticks out about his photographs is the way they carefully balance economy and sensitivity, creating a meticulously pared down visual language that he can then apply to various situations and scenes. Many of the images in Bravo settle into a quiet kind of underplayed grace, stripped of extraneous distractions and hardened into singular expressions. The best of Romero Beltrán’s interiors and landscapes make something with surprising bite out of what would seem to be nothing, and he clearly has an eye for the shifting emotional gestures of youthful portraiture. Seen together as an integrated artistic statement, Bravo is impressively thoughtful and coherent – slide this one onto your photobook shelf now, as Romero Beltrán clearly has the talent to generate much more photographic momentum.
Collector’s POV: Felipe Romero Beltrán is represented by Hatch Gallery in Paris (here) and Gaotai Gallery in Xinjiang (here). His work has little secondary market history at this point, so gallery retail likely remains the best option for those collectors interested in following up.
