Sedimentations (2022-2025)

Photography, Writing, Interviews, artist book.

Concept and photographs Ingrid Hernández
Book designer and photo editor: Fernando Gallegos
Graphic designer: Marcela Guadiana
Galley proof, 2024
12.60” x 9.25“
138 pages

This project  emerges from a reflection developed over two decades of artistic practice in the  neighborhoods and settlements autonomously constructed (informal settlements) of the city of Tijuana, Baja California, the place where I was born and have lived my entire life. 

I have learned that when second-hand materials discarded in the United States are transported to Tijuana, they are integrated into the local construction material market. These materials, originally intended for another purpose, are reused here to build homes. In these new constructions, recycled materials and the waste from maquiladoras overlap, creating layers of new uses and meanings. These buildings reconfigure the territory, generating an unfinished landscape in constant transformation, an “under construction” that extends through time and becomes permanent. This process shapes the city, where multiple styles coexist. 

This is precisely what leads me to compare the self-construction of homes with the phenomenon of sedimentation, a process in which moving materials are deposited and transform a surface. In Sedimentations, I explore this act of addition as a phenomenon that redefines the home and its environment, shaping the visual character of the city.

Over the course of two years, I took photographs and conducted interviews in seven neighborhoods and settlements autonomously constructed. The result takes the form of a large-format book that includes images and a text with reflections on the landscape, informal construction, and the aesthetic decisions that shape the publication.

The landscape photography and the construction of image series seek to reflect the coexistence of self-built homes with the topographical features of the places. The book’s format creates an immersive sense of space, unfolding its pages as part of a visual narrative that mimics walking through the city. The double, triple, and quadruple pages juxtapose images that generate new compositions. Through this editorial and artistic gesture, I seek to add layers of information that deepen the understanding of the city, making visible Tijuana as a space that challenges the idea that improvised techniques belong to the periphery, showing the city as a spontaneous, contradictory, and unstable space.