Al Braden Photographer

Pictures and photos of El Paso's Mission Trail, an historic grouping of three Spanish Missions dating to the Pueblo Revolt in Taos, New Mexico in 1680. Members of the Tigua Tribe migrated south along the Rio Grande River to escape the conditions up north. Ysleta's mission was formed at that time to minister to the Tigua people who continue as active members to this day. Socorro Mission is next in line to the east, and San Elizario Mission was the original county seat of El Paso County, Texas before the city of El Paso grew larger with the coming of the railroads through El Paso del Norte.

Photos of El Paso del Norte picture what was the original route of the Spanish Conquistadores as they traveled north into New Mexico and Colorado in search of gold. The pass was the route of the Rio Grande / Rio Bravo which forms the border between El Paso, Texas and its sister city of Juarez, Mexico.

California Poppy, Eschscholtzia californica Pictures and photos of California Poppies forming rich fields on the slope of Mount Franklin in El Paso, Texas - on those years where there is plenty of rain. The fields can lie dormant for years, and then with a rainy spring - the desert explodes into yellow and orange during March and April near the Trans Mountain Highway in El Paso.

Pictures and photos of El Paso, Texas as it explodes into light displays for celebration of Christmas. San Jacinto Plaza is the heart of the city and the location of the city's displays and parade. Many of the neighborhoods like Rim Road, Pennsylvania Circle and - especially - Eastridge are noted for Christmas lights and for luminarias on Christmas Eve. Here are photos that I took for a Texas Highways Magazine article.

This series began in 2007 as a protest against GW Bush's border fence as it was called at the time. Does this keep immigrants out - our us in? It's a horrific metaphor for conflicted border. I could not conceive the America of immigrants - my own people landed in the midwest in the early 1900's - now rejecting immigrants. These photos showed the absurdity of the wall a decade before Trump. It has now become a national nightmare as we separate immigrant families and become a land of fear rather than a welcoming nation. Photos of the border picture the El Paso/Cd. Juarez boundary in a new set of images uses the triptych form to amplify the story. These 15 triptychs are part of a larger and ongoing work to image the Rio Grande / Rio Bravo in contemporary terms. Selections from this series created in January 2010 have been exhibited at The People's Gallery, City Hall, Austin Texas; The Texas National 2010 Show at Stephen F. Austin University, Nacogdoches, Texas; The 24th Annual Member's Show of the Texas Photographic Society at Baylor University, Waco, Texas; and the 28th Annual Member's Show at the Houston Center for Photography, Houston, Texas. Here are triptychs of the border wall.