The publisher’s account of the period beginning in 2001 describes the annual discovery of at least 150 sets of decomposed or skeletal remains of people who died crossing into the United States from Mexico in remote areas of Arizona’s Sonoran Desert. The Pima County Forensic Science Center in Tucson handles most of them, analyzing and storing the remains, archiving possessions, and working to determine identities. In Left Behind, documentary photographer Jonathan Hollingsworth offers a sobering look at those who do not survive the Arizona border crossing and the personal effects they leave behind. The work takes the viewer through the day-to-day operations of the forensic science center and into its archive of personal effects.

Hollingsworth also traveled to Nogales, site of one of the largest border patrol stations in the United States, and to Green Valley, Arizona, where he found belongings left on the desert floor by migrants awaiting roadside pick-up in the dead of night. The book presents these locations together, moving between the institutional processing of death, the transit point, and the open desert where objects are abandoned. Gregory L. Hess MD contributes a foreword.

Hollingsworth describes the work as a way of humanizing the immigration issue in the United States. It points, he says, to how desperate these individuals are to escape and start a new life. He states that the book stands as a memorial to people who died alone, without ceremony, and who are often still unknown.

Published by Dewi Lewis in 2012 as a hardback of 112 pages with 75 color plates, the book measures 305mm by 229mm. Hollingsworth, based in New York, previously produced the photographic series What We Think Now, documenting young Americans’ response to the Iraq War; it was published as a catalogue and exhibited at the California Museum of Photography, Santa Fe Art Institute, Center for Photography at Woodstock, and Houston Center for Photography. His work has appeared in publications including The Sunday Times Magazine and Photo District News.