Magnum Editions Poster: Pressed sample of flora growing on Otay Mountain, California. 2019. Olivia Arthur

Description

Born in London, Arthur studied mathematics at Oxford University and photojournalism at the London College of Printing. After moving to Delhi in 2003 she worked as a freelance photographer in India for two-and-a-half years. There, she developed an interest in photographing women and their relationship to the societies in which they live.

This image, a pressing of a wildflower, is from a 2019 trip to the US-Mexico border wall, along with 15 colleagues from Magnum Photos. There, Arthur focused on the area around Otay mountain in San Diego county, which is home to a number of rare plant species.

“Otay Mountain becomes the border itself at a certain point, when it is considered steep and tough enough to be difficult to cross,” Arthur wrote of the visit. “It is also a designated wilderness area on the US side because of the number of rare plant species found there, and at the base of the mountain is a scattered community which has grown from an original pioneer town. I am working to bring these different points of view together by photographing, with samples of wild flowers I pressed, and also with extracts from the work of a photographer from the early 20th century, Hazel Scheckler, whose archive I found in the attic of a woman I met in Dulzura [a community close to Otay Mountain].”