Q&A with Krista Schlyer: How imagery is fighting against the border wall

Do you feel empowered to know that images can foster conservation and societal change?

So do we.

That’s why we’re so excited for you to meet with Krista Schlyer, a conservation writer and photographer, as well as a GWC photographer!

For over a decade, Krista has been working on the Borderlands Project, a visual storytelling campaign that is fighting against the border wall. In doing so, she has brought poignant narratives from the US-Mexico borderlands to millions of people, protected a very rare borderlands habitat preserve called the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, and instilled in all a greater understanding of the impact of walls on wildlife, ecosystems, and people.

Read on to learn more about Krista’s inspiring work with the Borderlands Project, and the true power of imagery in creating change.

GWC: Why did you decide to start the Borderlands Project?

Krista Schlyer: The Borderlands Project started in 2008. I started it because I had been working on this conservation story about a transboundary herd of bison. They lived on the border of US and Mexico, and was, at the time, one of only 5 free-ranging herds of wild bison left in North America.

While I was there, I was up in an airplane with a scientist, and we were taking pictures of the bison. And we happened to see them right as they were crossing the US-Mexico border. 

After the flight, we started talking to the landowners on both sides of the border. They said that the bison on the north side came over for a special type of grass that was in a pasture on the north side. On the south side, they were mostly coming to a pond that was one of the only year-round water resources from anywhere for many many miles. 

So their food and water resources were split by the border, and this was about two years after the US Congress passed a bill called the Secure Fence Act, and that bill mandated that the Department of Homeland Security build 700 miles of border wall.

At that time, it became clear to me that not only were the bison going to be harmed if this wall was built through their habitat, but all of the thousands of species that were along the border were going to be harmed. And I didn’t hear a lot of people talking about that.

So I decided that it would be a good thing to work on. At the time, I didn’t think that I was going to spend more than a decade working on it. I thought it would maybe be 6 months to a year.

But the more I worked on it, the more important it seemed, and the more I got engaged to the different stories of different wild species, people, and just all different facets that were going to be impacted by this huge 2000 mile long construction project.

GWC: What was the first project that you did for this campaign?

Krista Schlyer: I went to the International League of Conservation Photographers, which I had just joined that organization not long before. And I asked them  if they would let me organize an expedition of their member photographers to go to the border for a month, travel the whole border, take photographs, and then create outcomes from those photographs. 

I got 12 photographers and myself who agreed to go travel the border with me. And we were out there for a month in 2009.

When we finished with the expedition, I gathered photographs from all the photographers, and I put together an exhibit. The result was a 30 piece fine-art exhibit that I worked with members of Congress to bring that exhibit to the House of Representatives and the Senate, as well as some briefings on Capitol Hill to get experts to talk about the impacts of the border wall on wildlife and the land.

GWC: So what happened next?

Krista Schlyer: The exhibit was before the election where Barack Obama was elected. The hope was after he was elected that they would stop building the border wall. 

Unfortunately, that’s not what happened. The border wall construction continued.

So the project continued, and it’s sort of been this ongoing search to find ways to get to news outlets. I wrote a book about the ecology of the US-Mexico Borderlands, I started doing lectures across the country. I made a short film with a crew about the border and some of the issues that related to wildlife and ecosystems.

So the first project that I did was to create a StoryMap on the US-Mexico border, with ESRI’s StoryMap’s team, the Audubon Society, the University of Arizona, Sierra Club, Centre of Biological Diversity, and a bunch of other groups. The goal was to make it a tool for educators who were trying to talk about the impact of walls and other barriers on wildlife, and journalists who were trying to get some background on what had already happened in terms of border wall construction as they were covering this new attempt by the Trump administration.

Shortly after that came out, I did some talks about that StoryMap and about the border and I started having some conversations with some filmmakers that are friends of mine. We decided that we were going to make a feature film about the border and border wall. 

From 2017 to 2019, I worked on a film called Ay Mariposa, in collaboration with Morgan Heim (a GWC partner photographer!) and filmmaker Jenny Nichols. Ay Mariposa means “Oh butterfly”, and the film follows three characters, an immigrant woman, the head of the National Butterfly Society, and the butterfly, and looks at what it means to be building a wall in this place. We’ve been doing screenings across the country, and that now is the latest outcome of the Borderlands Project.

GWC: That’s amazing! How important is it to have collaborations with other photographers and non-profits in a campaign like this?

Krista Schlyer: I think to me, collaboration is essential to everything that I do. 

I mean, there’s no way I could do what I do without collaborating with nonprofits and NGOs and government and other organizations. Because I don’t have that kind of reach. 

There are all these people that have been focusing their lives around how to make change, or the environment, to conserve what we have and try to rebuild what we’ve lost. To not cooperate and collaborate with those folks and those organizations would just mean that the reach of the project would be minuscule in comparison to what it could be when you cooperate. So I’ve always really believed so strongly that collaboration with organizations is just foundation to any kind of a project like this.

GWC: What motivates you to keep going and to keep doing more projects?

Krista Schlyer: Sometimes I wonder about that myself. But I have times when I feel despair, and I feel very sad, and I just can’t do it anymore. But then I just give myself a little time to rest and then I start again and keep trying.

I think for me what it all goes back to, is that when I spend time taking photographs of wild creatures in particular, I feel a sense of responsibility towards them. And you know, whatever else happens, however else I might feel about my ability to be successful at this work, I can’t stop, because no matter what, that responsibility is always there.

I just try to find new ways and, you know, just don’t give up. I just can’t give up.

GWC: So do you find that your passion for this, the passion that you put into your projects, is maybe why you think this narrative touched so many people?

Krista Schlyer: That’s the key to any project like this. People can see when you love something, and if you show them that you care so much about this place or this animal or this cause, and you’re willing to kind of put that out there. In my experience, people really respond to that. They learn to care about a place or an issue or an animal through you. 

And some of them, maybe they feel that through you, and then it becomes their own thing. They do, whether it’s about the same issue or a different issue, they find a path of their own to care and to take responsibility. It’s really powerful, that’s what I’ve found over the years, that it’s a powerful thing to show that you care about something, and that you’re willing to take responsibility.

GWC: So if someone wanted to follow your footsteps and make their own visually powered action campaign, what kind of advice would you give to them?

Krista Schlyer: Gosh there’s a lot. I think one thing is to find something you really love. Find something that speaks to you, and not only speaks to you, but you think maybe that other people don’t – haven’t thought about it in the way that you’re thinking about it.

And then, think about who is the audience you think you need to affect most of all. For the Borderlands project, it’s really changed throughout the project because there’s so many audiences that play a role in what’s happening. Sometimes I’ll focus more on decision-makers, like members of Congress. Sometimes I’ll focus more on the press. Sometimes more on the general public. And in some instances, some issues, you might find that only one of those audiences or a different audience altogether is what matters, but some issues might be all of them. 

And then think about: what is the best way to convey a message? Is it a magazine story? Is it an exhibit that you put in a particular place? Is it doing a talk? You know, one of the audiences for the Borderlands Project that I never even imagined I would need to speak to was the national non-profits agency. Because I thought to myself, well the conservation organizations are surely all going to be on-board, they don’t need to hear from me. But didn’t turn out to really be true for some complex reasons. So sometimes one of the things I do is do my presentations to conservation organizations, and try to get people on board within these organizations so that they would then get the organization more invested in the issue. 

I could literally go on forever about it. But really, just taking the first step I think is the most important thing. You know, you take a step, and then you take the next, and then you have a life, like the project has a life. And it just starts to become, you know, if you’re invested in it and you care about it, it starts to become what it needs to become.

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Responses have been edited for length and clarity

To learn more about Krista’s work against the border wall visit: https://kristaschlyer.com/borderlands-2/