2024 Featured Photographers
Ximena Natera is a visual journalist born and raised in México City, based in the US since 2019. Her experience working in Mexico has shaped her practice and understanding of storytelling, focusing her work on human rights violations, stories of resilience, and collective memory.
To explore complex issues, her work focuses on the individual experiences of people often overlooked, teachers, mothers, children, artists, and community leaders.
Since 2013 she has been a member of the Red de Periodistas de a Pie, a network of Mexico-based journalists built to support local and independent journalism. As a photographer, she is interested in using images to bridge the gap between newsrooms and audiences through public talks and exhibitions. Ximena is an International Center of Photography graduate and a Next-Generation Safety Fellow for the IWMF.
90 years of Golden Gate Fields
Ximena Natera documented the closure of Berkeley’s Golden Gate Fields horse racing track after almost nine decades in business. Her in-depth visual reporting looked at what would become of the working men and women, who lived and cared for the horses on the backstretch, after the track closed for business.
Exercise riders and gallopers take horses to the track for their morning training session ahead of this weekend’s races. Usually a bustling scene, the backstretch at Golden Gate Fields was tranquil as many workers, trainers and horses had already moved out ahead of the track’s closure.
