Grayson West Photography — Tour de France 2017 Stage 5 PLANCHER-LES-MINES,…

The photographer Carolyn Drake set out for the U.S.-Mexico border just after Donald Trump won the Presidency. On the stump, he’d talked obsessively about building a wall—“big, fat, beautiful”—and Drake was struck, but not surprised, by its popular reception. “A lot of people in the U.S. were imagining that idea for a long time,” she told me recently. “There are people in this country who want to protect themselves from what they perceive as the dangers of Mexico and Mexicans, and I wanted to see the place that felt like it needed protection.” For two weeks, she drove from California to El Paso, taking pictures of the people, scenes, and landscapes she saw along the way. She made another trip just after the Inauguration, this time starting in El Paso and driving east, across Texas. “I felt I could see America better from a little north of the border,” she said.