Border Patrol Target #2, Lower Rio Grande National Wildlife Refuge, Texas Possibly 2013 - 2021

Richard Misrach captured this photograph of a discarded border patrol target in the Lower Rio Grande National Wildlife Refuge in Texas. The target, marked with a silhouetted figure, reveals the stark realities of border enforcement. This effigy echoes a primal form of symbolic representation—the human figure used as a vessel for projection. The practice of targeting human-like forms extends far back in history and across cultures. Think of the ancient practice of creating votive figures, small statues offered to deities as stand-ins for oneself, laden with hopes and fears. Or consider the use of effigies in rituals of sympathetic magic, where actions performed on an image are believed to affect the person it represents. Here, the silhouette isn’t about veneration or healing; it’s about dehumanization. The figure, devoid of identity, becomes a mere object, a target. Yet, this very act of reducing a human to a symbol paradoxically imbues the target with a potent, haunting power, a crude reminder of our collective capacity for violence and the emotional weight of symbolic representation.