About

The Bordernote project was conceived in the summer of 2023 to learn about the lives of musicians in the U.S.–Mexico borderlands in their own words. First, I wanted to satisfy my curiosity about the stories behind the musicians I have been photographing since I began spending time in Mexico over forty years ago. I had always been too timid to find out more. Approaching this desire as a formalized, documentary, and journalistic endeavor gave me a legitimate framework for asking musicians to participate. It also gave me a way to talk about the borderlands I know and love—often lost in the current politicized, crisis-focused approach to coverage that U.S. media consumers are constantly presented with across platforms—using methods I know and love: photography and first-person narrative. 

While the project was born out of personal curiosity, it is justified by the need to depict and understand the borderlands in ways that go beyond a currently popular and limited scope. Musicians provide a unique framework for this because their medium is one that they and non-musicians alike understand on a deeply personal level. Music is borderless because it is universal. Virtually everyone attempts to learn an instrument and/or sing. Regardless of whether they succeed, they still feel strongly about music. People associate it with times and places. People spend money on it and often live lifestyles informed by it. And as I learned, musicians on both sides of the border (and I’d imagine everywhere) most often feel they can’t live without it.

This documentary project comprises in-depth interviews and environmental portraits of musicians, regardless of genre or professional level, in the border communities of Arizona and Sonora, with the interviews edited into first-person narratives to accompany the portraits in a photobook. The interview questions were designed to encourage discussion around three specific topics that would evoke descriptions of life in the region that include and go beyond music and musicianship: 1) In what ways do musicians in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands articulate the connection between their personal histories, cultural identities, and their journeys into music? 2) How do musicians in the borderlands deal with the economic realities of performance, including their income, autonomy, and how they are perceived in their work? 3) How do living and performing in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands shape musicians’ practices, opportunities, and experiences across cultural and binational contexts?

Work on the project has so far resulted in a book published in May 2026, as well as presentations and exhibitions of selections from the project at JIREH Collective and the Mexican Consulate in Tucson and Museo Arte Patrimonio in Agua Prieta.

Richard Whitmer
Tucson, Arizona
August 2026

Richard Whitmer is an independent journalist and documentary photographer. Through photographs and personal narratives, his work explores the people and communities of the Arizona–Sonora borderlands, with a particular interest in identity, memory, work, and belonging. Before turning his focus to independent documentary projects, he spent more than two decades creating digital communications for nonprofits, universities, and businesses. He holds an M.A. in Bilingual Journalism from the University of Arizona, where he completed Bordernote, a documentary project featuring the stories of musicians from the U.S.–Mexico borderlands.