“Reclaiming the American West” (2024-2025)

Growing up in Boston, I was surrounded by monuments of the city’s old colonial and revolutionary history. Boston is known for its character: the nautical charm of sailboats, Good Will Hunting, names like “Fenway”, or the silver bowls by Paul Revere in our art museums. As one of the oldest cities in the country, the New England aesthetic Boston displays is just as old if not older than the United States itself. 

Boston is not known for its Latin community. When I first read the prompt for this essay, which was to respond to a photo essay capturing some aspect of American life, I was ready to retrace old thoughts. Coming from a Colombian family, the strange clash of South America and New England was always a thread I pulled and examined, often to my own detriment. Yet, as I skimmed through the nearly 80 photo essays my professor had laid out, my eyes were drawn to one by Kathya María Landeros, a Mexican-American photographer whose collection of lush and tranquil photographs in California and Washington brimmed with quiet life, seemingly uncontroversial. As I researched more about Landeros in preparation for my writing, I wondered if Landeros was asking the same questions that I had been: how do Latin people fit into places which evoke strong and seemingly established American imagery such as Boston or the West?

I chose to use the term “Latin” in place of “Latinx” because, while I believe the motivations of gender inclusivity are valid and important, “Latin” is an organic gender-neutral term with precedent describing music or cuisine in English. Additionally, I know my immigrant family would not recognize the term and I do not believe the communities Landeros photographs would either. Along these same lines, writing this essay is best described as non-linear. I spent too much time trying to understand Landeros’ intentions as a photographer that I lost sight of how I and other viewers might feel when presented with her photos. When I read Sandra Cisneros’ introduction, I began to realign my understanding of the photo essay. I felt like I had stumbled upon Landeros’ work on purpose, motivating me to write what I feel and think, not what I thought someone might like to read. Just as with my own paintings, the tweaking, polishing, and revisions took up by far the bulk of the process. This essay only exists because of my friends who listened to my nightly brainstorms in the library, my professor who guided my revisions, and the thoughtful works and sweeping ideas Landeros and other Latin people in the United States have challenged and remade.

Bobby Zabin, originally from Boston, Massachusetts, is a freshman studying Art History with minors in Studio Art and Linguistics at NYU. He’s particularly interested in the works of art originating in the Americas, whether created before or after colonization. He values how writing and language can alter the contexts and purposes surrounding an artwork. When not browsing museum websites for hours, Bobby also paints watercolors of his family or motorcycles, finding the process of planning and investigating nearly as fulfilling as the realized piece. In his essay, he hopes to encourage reconsiderations on the history of borders and homecomings in the American West with a visual catalyst.