July 1 - 29 September 2024 - Arles - "Sous la surface". Christoph Wiesner. Director of Rencontres d'Arles of photography -

Hierve el Agua - Cristina de Middel’s photographic project - Journey to the Center - Cristina de Middel/Magnum Photos

For the past few years, the Spanish photographer Cristina de Middel has been documenting the caravans of migrants who have travelled through Mexico from its southern border with Guatemala to reach a small town in California called Felicity. A monument in Felicity proclaims it boldly as the “Center of the World”. Inspired by that fact, De Middel has used Jules Verne’s book Journey to the Centre of the Earth as a fantastical reference point and spine for the migrants’ story.

This picture was taken in the Mexican province of Oaxaca, at the famous rock formation called Hierve el Agua (“the water boils”). The pool in which the woman is half-submerged is formed by hot mineral springs that calcify when they overflow the cliff edge, forming vertiginous white rock formations that look like frozen waterfalls. The site is both a tourist attraction and a sacred place for native Mexican populations; excavations have revealed irrigation systems dating back 2,500 years. (As Verne wrote, in a different context, “I can hardly believe my eyes. Who would have ever imagined, under this terrestrial crust, an ocean with ebbing and flowing tides, with winds and storms?”). In recent times, Hierve el Agua has also become a staging post on the migrants’ long journeys.

The air of mystery or magic that attends this image is typical of De Middel’s project, Journey to the Center, which recently won the Prix Virginia award for female photographers. Her aim is to reclaim the narrative of the long migration from the rhetoric of American politics – which insists on seeing Mexico as a kind of filter or obstacle to these never-ending journeys from the south – and to capture some of the surreality and strangeness of the quest itself. “To present,” as she says, “the route through Mexico as a heroic journey rather than an escape.”