Highway 15: Mexico at 55 MPH

In 2010, when my friend and I got in the car and moved to Mexico, I had a lot of time to sit and stare out the window, wondering if I would regret what I had done: quit my dependable seven-year job at The Denver Post and set up shop 1,000 miles south of the border. When we finally got to Mexico and were on Highway 15, which is Mexico’s main north-south route, I was eager to start taking photos.

Luckily, our 14-day road trip meant there was plenty of time to look out and observe the new Mexican landscape all around us, which was becoming increasingly dried out, and more and more Mexican, as we headed further south.

This was not the first time I’d driven Highway 15. Two years earlier my friend and I had driven north, to Colorado from Lake Chapala in the same car, which was a fire engine red 1994 Suzuki Samurai. It was barely roadworthy, but that’s another story (which you can read if you have 15 minutes). The difference was that this time, after quitting my job, I was going there for good. There was no going back.

So in between two breakdowns (including one in the Sonoran Desert), I occupied myself with taking pictures from the passenger seat.The panoramic aspect ratio was chosen, in part, to remove any blurring of the closer foreground as it whizzed by at 55 MPH. Asides from that and the obvious similar photographic treatment, the thing that ties them all together are the power and phone cables passing through all but one of the photos. Usually, something you want to avoid, but oftentimes unavoidable. In this case, they help show the interconnectedness of Mexico and Mexicans living in the six states through which Highway 15 passes, from Sonora at the US border, to its termination in Mexico City 1,469 miles later.

The panoramic aspect ratio was chosen, in part, to remove any blurring of the closer foreground as it whizzed by at 55 MPH. Asides from that and the obvious similar photographic treatment, the thing that ties them all together are the power and phone cables passing through all but one of the photos. Usually, something you want to avoid, but oftentimes unavoidable. In this case, they help show the interconnectedness of Mexico and Mexicans living in the six states through which Highway 15 passes, from Sonora at the US border, to its termination in Mexico City 1,469 miles later.

We traveled 1,042 of those miles between Nogales and Guadalajara. These photos were taken at various locations along Highway 15 in Sonora and Sinaloa.