7 Lenses Focus on the Border’s Dichotomies : Photography: Exhibit fixes some compelling images in the fluid meeting of two cultures and the voyage from one to another.

Imagine the San Diego-Tijuana metropolitan area as one big maquiladora .Millions of workers contributing to an effort that goes on around the clock. Every day the plant churns out tons, reams, multitudes of its main product: dichotomy.

That’s life on the border.

And that’s the subject of “Los Vecinos” (The Neighbors), an exhibit opening Tuesday at the San Diego Museum of Photographic Arts.

The show features the work of seven photographers, each focusing on various issues relating to the border: Don Bartletti, Susan Meiselas, Liliana Nieto del Rio and Elizabeth Sisco from the United States, and Graciela Iturbide, Pablo Ortiz Monasterio and Antonio Turok of Mexico. The show also includes the work of San Diego video artists Paul Espinosa and Louis Hock.

The exhibit ranges from traditional photojournalism as practiced by Bartletti and Nieto del Rio--staff photographers for The Times in San Diego and Newsday in New York, respectively--to Sisco’s conceptual, multimedia installation exploring the “conflicting desires, attitudes and values which are made manifest by the international tourist trade.” Between the two poles is Meiselas’ work, which combines the journalistic style she has displayed in coverage of Central America with a fine aesthetic vision.

The common theme is, predictably, the voyage from Mexico to the United States, which is a matter-of-fact, daily occurrence on the border. But these photographers provide a fresh look, a reminder that life here is unlike that anywhere else in the country. It involves two nations and two cultures sharing a border that is simultaneously palpable and nebulous.

“Maybe looking at this show will give people a sense of what the reality is for these people,” said Arthur Ollman, executive director of the museum. “We don’t have illusions about the project. We’re not going to solve problems or define the entire set of issues. No sooner than we defined an issue, it would change. But wouldn’t it be great if there had been a body of work done 10 years ago to compare this to?

“We’re just establishing a beachhead, defining what the seven or eight islands of concern are about today. The project affords us an opportunity to connect the dots between the islands and interpret a greater reality than the sum of the parts. Maybe we’ll have a little more control over the problem areas and stir people to study more about the issues.”

Bartletti has been watching these issues unfold for 29 years, since his family moved to Vista when he was a teen-ager. Over the years, Bartletti has seen the phenomenal growth in illegal immigration, and his work in recent years has focused on North County living conditions for the migrant workers.

“When I was a teen-ager, immigrants were used exclusively in agriculture,” he said. “But in the last 15 years, the numbers have dramatically increased. Never did you see up to 50 men waiting on street corners for day labor. The labor pool has far outgrown the chances for employment. And now it’s not just single men coming over, but wives, sons, daughters and entire families.

“I know people have been living out there since ’65 because I’d worked for a summer in the fields. I go out there to document because it’s such an anomaly. The conditions are so out of sync with our society. As I progressed and took a deeper look, I realized these people are really there for the same reasons as all the other immigrants to this county--climate and economic opportunities. But these people have to live in shacks in the canyons.”

Bartletti, who has been with The Times since 1984, says he is grateful for the opportunity to present his work outside its usual, transitory vehicle.

“This is my first time to exhibit in a gallery or museum. In a newspaper, because we work on a day-to-day basis, the effectiveness of the work is over once it’s published because it becomes old news. To have the best work resurrected is something I’m deeply proud of. It’s history in the making. Even though I work on daily deadlines, I’m always shooting these pictures as a historical record.”

But this is not cold, detached work. Bartletti is not an observer, he’s a participant, and sometimes the involvement is too difficult to allow him to press the shutter button.

“The hardest picture I tried to take for this project was at the funeral of a kid who was run over by a Border Patrol vehicle. I went to the wake in Los Angeles, and when the mom and dad left the casket and came down the aisle, I couldn’t take the picture. They were completely distraught. I realized they weren’t just figures or statistics coming through that fence. This was that man’s son, and I don’t know how you can bury your son.”

Meiselas has seen a lot of death in her award-winning coverage of the wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador. She had never been to the U.S.-Mexican border, and chose to follow the U.S. Border Patrol on its rounds of the region.

“One night, we were walking through a field and saw five illegals, who immediately hit the ground,” said Meiselas, who is a member of the famed photographers collective known as Magnum. “The patrolmen pulled out a spotlight to help find them, and I realized that, in other countries I’ve worked in, they would have used a gun instead of a spotlight.

“The Border Patrol was the edge of the inherent contradictions because the patrolmen are being asked to do a job, but (the public) doesn’t know what it wants. They were very articulate about feeling impotent and frustrated. It’s very much a cat-and-mouse game, and their efforts are limited.”

Meiselas effectively captures the hunt and chase, aided by her first-time use of a Widelux camera, a format that produces a wider, more dramatic, horizontal image than a traditional 35-millimeter camera.

“It was a very difficult format to master,” she said. “In a way I felt the situation was all theater, and that particular camera seemed to capture that feeling. I was making discoveries for myself visually.”

Another discovery Meiselas made is the increase in illegal immigration from Central American countries.

“It was a very painful process for me to observe because of the way this country is intertwined with the history of those countries and because I don’t see easy solutions. It’s painful because the fighting I know is happening on the streets of El Salvador is connected to the incredible influx we’ll see in the next months. I see a spiral of tension and conflict.”

Turok also addressed that spiral. Much of his work in the exhibition focuses on two Hondurans whom he followed from one river to another--from the Suchiate on the Guatemala-Mexico border to the Tijuana on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Sisco, a San Diegan who is well known for her provocative work with the Border Arts Workshop, explores the paradoxes of tourism in her work titled “Double Vision.” Iturbide, a protege of the famed Mexican photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo, turned her camera on the subculture of cholos , the proud but disenfranchised youths on both sides of the border.

Nieto del Rio also focused on the younger generation, but her work captures the lives of the children who work, and sometimes live, on the streets of Tijuana. Monasterio’s work explores the maquiladora industry, an integral part of the border economy.

The exhibit continues through Jan. 7. A symposium exploring border issues and featuring the artists and various commentators will be held Dec. 8-9.