Mahé Elipe
Until finding them
In a country where thousands of people seem to have "evaporated" from the face of the earth, because of the correlation between police and drug trafficker, the search for the missing had to be done by the civilians themselves. Mothers, wives, daughters or sisters of those who did not return home had no choice but to take shovels and picks and start digging. The El fuerte collective which now boasts more than 200 members — mostly women — was the first to emerge in Mexico. Known as Las Rastreadoras, the group was born in 2014 in the state of Sinaloa in northwestern Mexico. Since its creation, the group has found over 128 bodies through their searches. This report is the beginning of a long term project focus on the collective and individual strength of this group.
Mahé Elipe
Born in 1991, Mahé Elipe is a French photographer based in Mexico. She completed higher education studies in France with a Licence in applied arts, and at the EPTA school of Photography, where she perfected her visual arts skills. Member of the Hans Lucas studio since 2016, she is attracted by the fusion of social concerns, arts and communication, she uses photography as a way to try and determine where human beings find their place in the society. Her goals as a photojournalist is to ask a lot about the place of the human in society in particular the plaque of women, taking advantage of the medium that photography is. Mahé then builds her images by feeding on the culture of those she knows.