Pablo Allison

It’s midnight, and Pablo Allison is clinging to the top of a fast-moving freight train as it speeds south through the Mexican desert. Heavy rain batters his body; it’s freezing cold. The train shakes as it rushes noisily on at 100kph, meaning Allison can barely adjust his grip during what will be a 10-hour journey, for fear of falling off into the darkness.

Travelling illegally on this industrial network is fraught with dangers – it’s also common for these vast trains to derail, or for criminal gangs to come aboard – but it’s still the safest of the few travel options open to migrants moving across Mexico. And photographer and graffiti artist Allison has been doing these trips with them for more than three years now, to document and better understand the experiences of some of the tens of thousands of migrants who pass through the country every year on their way to the United States.

Allison began riding these trains in 2016 with the aim of shooting the inaccessible landscapes along Mexico’s private train routes. “But I realised I couldn’t turn my lens away from the migrants I met,” he says. “I’m fascinated by the perseverance, the strength, how people do these extraordinarily difficult journeys. The motivation people have to escape, to seek a better life, is astonishing.”

Most migrants Allison meets are escaping poverty, violence or both. There are men, women, children, young and old, from all sorts of backgrounds and situations, from all over the world, battling the odds and often treacherous conditions to make a new life. “People come from as far as Iraq, Syria, Iran Bangladesh, and find themselves in South America,” he says. “Then they embark on a journey through various countries, cross the notorious lawless jungle of north-west Colombia, the Darién Gap, and then somehow get to Panama. Once they get to Mexico, they still have so much to do… Those of us living moderately comfortable lives should learn from these people, rather than demonising or criminalising them.”

Writ large: the message in Allison’s graffiti and his photography is clear – love conquers fear

When Allison meets The Red Bulletin, he’s far from Mexico. It’s a rainy February day in Hastings on England’s south coast, and Allison – dressed in a red T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan ‘FUCK TRUMP’ – is in the UK to run a workshop on migration at a street-art event and spray-paint a wall in town with a poem by a Guatemalan migrant he travelled with. In recent years, Allison has taught workshops in several countries, in art galleries and refugee centres, using his skills in both photography and graffiti to reach a range of audiences. A book of some of his photographic work comes out later this month. But Allison isn’t pushing a political agenda.

“I’m always careful not to be preachy about social or political issues,” he says. “Everyone has an idea of what migration means, and I don’t dictate. I show them my experience as I’ve documented it, and we have a conversation. This project is primarily about me understanding the complex reality of people who have to escape very difficult situations. The real objective has always been for me to become a better person.”

Allison’s passion for this subject started when he was young. Born in Manchester, Allison moved with his family to Mexico – the birthplace of his mother – when he was three. Allison was curious, his parents liberal. “My mum’s only rules were that I couldn’t take drugs or join the Nazi party,” says Allison, now 38. So he started exploring ’90s Mexico City. “At 16 or so, I’d take my parents’ camera and photograph graffiti. I’d go to train yards on the outskirts of the city to paint trains. I’d notice people travelling on the tops of these trains, which run between Mexico, the US and Canada.”

Allison’s own journey has been anything but straightforward. He’s been imprisoned in both the UK and the US, and held at gunpoint in Mexico – distressing episodes that have informed and shaped his current work. “Having my liberty taken from me made me realise how important being creative is,” he says. “Art is freedom. I was free even then, because I was able to use my head.”

Allison was first sent to prison in 2012, a decade after returning to the UK to discover the graffiti scene and study documentary photography. “London’s energy was inspiring,” he says. “Graffiti belongs to urban environments, and I was seriously into it. It’s the adrenalin, the rebelliousness, the creativity, the curiosity. Graffiti has been a great educator for me. I’ve never seen it as destructive.”

But, in the run-up to the Olympic Games, London police were cleaning up. Allison was given a 19-month jail sentence – six of which would be served in HM Prison Wormwood Scrubs – for tagging trains. “I don’t see graffiti as a criminal act,” he says. “But I always knew that prosecution was possible. It was about completing the sentence so I could leave and start a new life.”

While he was inside, Allison collaborated with his photographer sister, Roxana, on a creative project about the experience. He read, wrote and drew. “I just wanted to be locked in my cell,” he says. “I had so much to do. I didn’t want to waste time.”

Allison says he left more serious, more solitary and less restless. He stopped doing graffiti. He ran a lot. He continued to work on projects around migration and identity, while working several different jobs in London, including roles at charities Amnesty International and Action Aid. His idea for the project in Mexico began to form.

“I realised I wanted to go back, to apply my knowledge from those charities,” he says. “I was very motivated to start from scratch there.” In 2016, he moved back to Mexico City to begin photographing the landscapes visible to migrants when they travel by train, a single project he thought would be done within a year, but which has now morphed into two projects across three countries, which are still ongoing, almost four years later.

Allison soon experienced first-hand the vulnerability of the people travelling these routes. “One train won’t take you from south to north,” he says. “You have to understand the route you’re taking, you have to get on and off. These freight trains carry thousands of dollars’ worth of goods to the US or Canada. Banditos regularly steal grain, TVs, whatever. So travelling this way is seriously risky.”

Brave statement: a tribute to the Migrantes Valientes. The tombstones display the names of some of the migrants’ countries of birth

He has witnessed violence, been robbed, and was almost killed two years ago by a criminal gang while travelling with two friends. “We were held at gunpoint on a train,” Allison says. “I prayed for my life. We were lucky to escape alive.” Yet he was back at work the next month, armed with his camera, travelling on foot and by train with a caravan of around 7,000 people. “Somehow, you brush it aside,’ he says. “After all, I’ve chosen to do this.”

Then, last year, Allison’s resolve was tested again. After he was refused entry to Canada, US agents noticed Allison had overstayed the visa he’d been issued to attend an exhibition in New York a few months earlier. He was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and imprisoned in Tacoma, Washington State. “I had no idea,” says Allison. “It was an admin error! But they locked me up. I ended up being in jail for almost a month – I believe because of my previous conviction. I’d done nothing wrong, but I was handcuffed, leg-cuffed. I wore a prison uniform. On the way to jail, I remember seeing these huge murals showing great American scenes like the Grand Canyon, which felt pretty ironic as those were the landscapes I’d wanted to photograph.”

Allison threw himself into his writing and drawing. He got fellow inmates to pose for portraits. “Again, being creative was crucial in an environment like that,” he says. “Imagine, you wake up in a cell with 85 other people. You have two widescreen TVs showing CNN all day long in a confined environment. The food’s terrible. You’re forced to go to sleep at 11pm. Then all through the night there’s noise.”

But somehow Allison also managed to find positives thanks to the other inmates – mostly people classed as illegal immigrants, awaiting deportation. “We gave each other nicknames, joked about our situation,” he says. “I laughed so much. It was so much therapy to me. I realised that I didn’t need to be in Canada, I needed to be in that prison. That’s where the work I’ve been doing passionately for the last few years had to lead me, to the detention centre that I’d heard stories about from migrants. Before this, I’d always had the option to opt out, to go back home. When I was locked in that jail, I was treated like any other prisoner. That was the first moment I could feel like a non-privileged person working on this topic.”

After Allison was cleared to leave, he waited in a holding cell. “Most people in there with me were being deported and losing everything they had; some were still wearing their work uniforms, others didn’t have their own clothes so were still wearing their prison uniform. But it was a party. We were still locked up, but it was a celebration of freedom.”

Although, like most, Allison recently endured yet another unforeseen period of lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic – the time was spent in Manchester with his sister – he’s back on the migrant trail in Mexico again. “People always try to escape bad conditions,” he says, “so migration doesn’t stop.” How does he see his projects ending? “The moment it doesn’t stimulate me, is the moment I’ll stop. But despite the dangers, it still makes me feel alive.

“I’ve seen people find the strength to move forward. People who embark on any journey as a means to survive and live – and maybe a bit more than that, too – appreciate life. People are pretty optimistic, resilient and enthusiastic. They crack jokes. I’m fascinated by that. We should celebrate migration and understand it not as a problem but as a phenomenon. Trump’s idea that they’re all criminals, it’s rubbish. There will always be exceptions, but all the many, many people I’ve become friends with are hardworking people.”

It’s this idea of positivity in the face of hardship that inspired the name of Allison’s forthcoming book, The Light of the Beast. “‘The Beast’ is a name that migrants have given the train over the years,” he says. “It’s dangerous, and there’s the roar of the engine. It’s like a huge monster that people have to jump on the back of. The light is the hope that it represents, too.”

The Light of the Beast is out on September 2, published by Pavement Studio, and an exhibition of Allison’s work will be at Make Your Mark Gallery in Helsinki from September 2-30; pabloallison.co.uk