Mexicans arrested while trying to cross the border to the United States, San Ysidro, California

Alex Webb

Under any rubric, Alex Webb is a photojournalist, yet his work transcends the typical standards of the genre. Webb ventures to places that are unlikely candidates for street photography, places that he feels contain intriguing sociopolitical tensions and clashes of culture. For 30 years, Webb has captured images across the world that are humorous and enigmatic documentations of life in the streets—often, unpaved—which greatly differ from his private New England upbringing. After receiving his bachelor's degree in history and literature alongside photography study at Harvard, Webb became an associate member of Magnum Photos in 1976 and practiced street photography in New York. Inspired by Graham Greene's book The Comedians set in Haiti, Webb began traveling throughout the Caribbean and border towns of Mexico, switching between black-and-white and color film.