Crossing Frontiers

I made this photograph while flying across the Andes Mountains from Buenos Aires to Santiago. What first drew me to the scene was the immense landscape beneath the aircraft, but the photograph ultimately preserved something more personal: the anticipation of reaching someone who gave the journey its true meaning.

Crossing Frontiers examines travel as both physical movement and emotional transition. The mountains represent a visible boundary between nations, while the journey itself suggests the less visible frontiers crossed through expectation, vulnerability, and hope. As the opening exhibit of the Journeys collection, the photograph introduces travel not merely as a change in location, but as a change in perspective.

This photograph was taken over the Andes Mountains on Saturday, March 5, 2011, at 8:48 in the morning, while flying from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Santiago, Chile. The date and journey are preserved not only in the photograph's metadata but also in the passport stamp from that trip.

Officially, the journey was a business trip. I was traveling to visit customers, and that was the reason printed on the itinerary. But like many journeys in life, there was another reason that never appeared on paper.

I was also traveling to see someone.

Looking back now, I realize the customers were the excuse.

She was the purpose.

As the aircraft crossed the Andes, I looked out the window and watched the mountains stretch endlessly beneath the wings. At the time, I simply admired the beauty unfolding below and reached for my camera. I couldn't have known that a single photograph would preserve more than the landscape—it would preserve the quiet anticipation of a journey that was about to change my life.

Years have passed, and life has carried me in directions I could never have predicted. Yet every time I return to this image, I remember that some destinations are measured in miles, while others are measured by the people we hope to see waiting at the end of them.

For that reason, Crossing Frontiers became the opening exhibit of the Photography Wing. Every meaningful journey begins long before we arrive. It begins with a reason to go.

Every journey begins with a destination, but the places that shape us most are often not found on a map. Sometimes we travel for work, for duty, or for obligation. Yet beneath every itinerary may lie a quieter purpose—a promise to keep, a reunion long anticipated, or someone whose presence gives meaning to the miles.

Mountains, borders, and oceans remind us that the world is vast. Yet the greatest frontiers we cross are often invisible. They exist between uncertainty and hope, departure and arrival, expectation and memory.

In time, we may forget the route we traveled. What remains is the reason we chose to begin.

Preserved as the first accessioned photograph in the Francisco Colón Studio Photography Wing and as the opening exhibit of the Journeys collection. The work establishes the Wing's continuing exploration of travel, memory, personal history, and the ways in which movement can transform perspective.