Isaiah Branch-Boyle 

Photographer

When I was four years old my grandfather taught me how to light dynamite. He was the son of an Irish miner and I inherited that history. ⁣⁣
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My mother’s family is harder to trace. Like a long fuse it winds through a bedrock of Hispanic and Ute and Pueblo and Apache and Basque cultures. She teaches me traditional plant medicine mixed with Catholicism and feeds me food that is neither Basque nor Ute but is a firey blend of both.⁣⁣
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The explosion never asks if it’s more fuse or dynamite. It is both and neither, and moves forward regardless. I have spent my life between the shattered cultural lines of the southwest, where the only thing I can call myself is mestizo.⁣⁣
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I now live at 11,700 feet in the San Juan Mountains in the rebuilt ruins of a cabin on my grandfather’s old mining claim. The land is stolen Ute land. I am both the robber and the robbed, building on the foundational ruins of my elders, trying to find a way forward. ⁣⁣
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I use a camera to tell the stories of the people and land that I am from. I’m grateful to continue telling the rich and complex narrative of the southwest.