Two photographers explore memory and borderland histories
Presa House Gallery in San Antonio is hosting two solo exhibitions by Tucson-based photographer Marcus Xavier Chormicle and Dallas-based artist Raul Rodriguez. While their approaches differ, both artists use photography as more than a tool for documentation—treating it instead as a way to dig into memory, identity, and the layered histories of the American Southwest.
Drawing from personal archives and regional narratives, their work reflects on family lineage, labor, migration, and inherited stories. Each artist moves between documentary and intervention, turning the photograph into a space where private experience and public history overlap.
The exhibitions are on view by appointment through April 18, 2026.
About the artists
Marcus Xavier Chormicle (b. 1997) is a lens-based artist from Las Cruces, New Mexico, and a lineal descendant of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians. His practice spans photography, collage, installation, artist books, and performance, often centering on grief, generational trauma, and the histories embedded in the Southwestern landscape.
Working frequently with family archives, Chormicle treats photography as a bridge across time—connecting personal memory to broader narratives of displacement, resistance, and survival. He draws on familiar formats like scrapbooks and domestic portrait displays, reworking them to situate intimate family histories within the wider context of violence experienced by Indigenous peoples, Chicanos, and Nuevomexicanos.
He is currently pursuing an MFA in Photography, Video, and Imaging at the University of Arizona and was named a 2025 US Latinx Artist Fellowship recipient. He earned his BA in Journalism and Mass Communication from Arizona State University in 2020.
Raul Rodriguez (b. 1988) is a Texas-based artist working across photography and multimedia. His practice explores cultural memory, place, and resilience, often weaving together personal and political histories tied to the U.S.–Mexico borderlands.
In projects like Tracing Bracero Legacies, Rodriguez revisits the Bracero Program (1942–1964), drawing from archival photographs and oral histories. He transfers historical images onto fabric and places them within present-day landscapes, creating a physical and visual dialogue between past and present. His portraits of former Braceros, alongside images of sites like the Rio Vista Farm processing center in El Paso, highlight endurance within systems shaped by labor and migration.
Across his work, Rodriguez focuses on what remains despite erasure. Using portraiture, landscape, and material experimentation, he questions dominant narratives of Texas identity and rethinks how memory is carried forward. He currently serves as Education Coordinator at the Latino Cultural Center in Dallas. Rodriguez holds a BFA from the University of North Texas and an MFA from Texas Christian University, and he founded Deep Red Press to support underrepresented photo-based artists in Texas.
