Join, Ojalá Que Los Míos Nunca Se Muden Photography Project!
This project is an ongoing photographic portrait series dedicated to uplifting and celebrating the richness, diversity, and resilience of Latino communities across Houston. Through portraiture, meaningful places, and cultural symbols, the project honors the many ways we continue to preserve, celebrate, and pass down the traditions, histories, and identities of our countries of origin while building lives in the city we now call home.
The title, Ojalá Que Los Míos Nunca Se Muden, is a lyric from Bad Bunny's song Debí Tirar Más Fotos. Within this project, the phrase takes on another meaning. In today's political climate, particularly amid the renewed immigration policies and increased enforcement under the second Trump administration, many Latino communities are living through a time of uncertainty. For some families, that uncertainty comes in the form of detention, persecution, deportation, or separation. For others, it is felt through the rise in anti-immigrant rhetoric, discrimination, prejudice, and the feeling of being viewed with suspicion simply because of who they are, how they speak, or where they come from. Regardless of immigration status, many Latinos are navigating a climate that can make them feel unwelcome in a place they have helped build and continue to shape every day.
Houston
Houston is one of the most diverse cities in the United States, a city shaped by generations of immigrants and the cultures they brought with them. For generations, people from across Latin America and around the world have made Houston home, building families, neighborhoods, businesses, communities, and traditions that have become part of the city's identity.Today, Houston is home to more than 2.3 million people, with nearly half of the city's population identifying as Hispanic or Latino. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 44.2% of Houston's population identifies as Hispanic or Latino, while 29.3% of residents are foreign born. Nearly half of Houstonians age five and older, 47.1%, speak a language other than English at home.The presence of Latino communities is even more significant across the greater Houston metropolitan area. In 2023, the Houston metropolitan area had an estimated 2.88 million Hispanic residents, and it experienced the largest numerical increase in Hispanic residents of any U.S. metropolitan area that year, adding more than 74,000 Hispanic residents.But numbers can only tell part of Houston's story.The city's diversity can be found in its neighborhoods, restaurants, markets, churches, music, festivals, soccer fields, small businesses, family gatherings, and everyday traditions. It can be heard in the languages spoken at home and seen in the ways people continue to celebrate where they come from. Houston is a place where cultures meet, overlap, evolve, and are passed from one generation to the next.Latino communities have helped build Houston's neighborhoods, businesses, culture, and identity, carrying with them languages, music, food, traditions, faith, and histories that continue to enrich the city every day. For many, Houston has become home without requiring them to leave their heritage behind. Instead, their cultures have found new expressions here.Ojalá Que Los Míos Nunca Se Muden begins in Houston because Houston is personal to me and because this city provides a powerful place to document the many homelands that exist within one city. The project is interested not only in where people come from, but in what they carry with them, what they preserve, what they pass down, and how those cultures become part of the place they now call home.This project currently centers Houston, but its vision is not limited to the city. As the project grows, it may expand to surrounding communities and, eventually, to Latino communities across the United States. Houston is where this story begins.Within this project, Ojalá Que Los Míos Nunca Se Muden becomes more than a lyric. It becomes both a quiet prayer and an affirmation. It is a hope that our families can continue to live, grow, and belong in the communities they call home, while also reminding us that our cultures, our histories, and our identities endure. We build homes, create community, and contribute to the places we live without erasing where we come from. Rather than defining Latino communities through immigration alone, this project centers culture. It invites viewers to see the richness, beauty, and complexity of the communities behind the headlines. These photographs celebrate the many ways Latino cultures continue to thrive in Houston and recognize that the city itself has been shaped by the people, traditions, and stories that arrived from across Latin America. They are portraits of people, but they are also portraits of homelands carried across borders and kept alive through memory, tradition, and pride.
Join Me in Creating This Project
For this project, I am inviting Latinos from all backgrounds and countries of origin to participate by sharing a piece of their story. Whether your family has been in Houston for generations or you arrived more recently, your story matters. Each participant will be photographed in a meaningful location in Houston that reflects their life, memories, or sense of belonging. I also ask that you wear or bring an object that represents your country or culture. It may be a soccer jersey, traditional clothing, a musical instrument, jewelry, a family heirloom, a religious object, a handmade craft, or something deeply personal. Whatever you choose, it should reflect the culture you continue to carry and the homeland that continues to live within you.
These portraits are about more than photographs. They are about celebrating the countries we represent, the traditions we continue, and the cultures we refuse to leave behind. Together, your portrait, your chosen location, and the object you bring will become a visual reminder that culture does not end at a border. Our cultures did not stop at the border. They continue to live through us. They evolve across generations and find new expressions in the places we now call home.
My hope is to create an archive that reflects the beauty, diversity, and strength of Latino communities in Houston, one that celebrates who we are, where we come from, and the cultures we continue to carry forward. If you choose to participate, thank you for trusting me with your story. It is an honor to create this project alongside our community, and I hope these portraits become a lasting celebration of the people, cultures, and histories that continue to shape Houston every day.