Pecos

by Hope Mora

Pecos, Texas has for most of its life been a place in between here and there. It is flat, hot, and dusty with little geological dimension save for the scrub brush that dots the endless horizon. The much-mythologized Pecos River cuts through the windswept plains east of town. Follow that river and the Texas-Mexico border is just a few hours south.

Yet unlike many of the rural towns that have faded away in an ever-increasing urbanized age, Pecos sits on the Permian Basin—a massive geological formation stretching across parts of West Texas and Eastern New Mexico that is exceedingly rich with oil and gas.

Hope is from Pecos and much of her family is still there. She knows the rituals of life in the small town, has witnessed the economic shifts of the oil boom/bust cycle, and knows that it is the labor and resilience of the Latina/o population that forms the structural web of Pecos, as is true in many rural outposts from the oil fields of West Texas to the meat-packing towns of the Midwest.

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7x11 in. Rubber Band Binding, 20 pages, Contingent Sequence

Unfolds to become 11x14 in. Double-Sided Portable Exhibition

Photographs by Hope Mora
Text by Jason Reed
Typography by M. Wright
Published in 2023
Edition of 100