Jay Pickthorn
Jay Pickthorn is a photographer based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
My first professional photo was of my parents in front of their insurance agency in Sisseton.My parents brought me to work with them, and I kept myself busy with an instant camera. Some of my first photos were for insurance claims — damaged crops, crashed cars. My parents still have the photos somewhere.I never seriously considered photography as a career when I went to college. I briefly tried politics, but after an internship in Washington, DC, I decided I wanted to help people in a different way.It wasn’t until I took a photography class in college, which was taught by a photojournalist, that I thought I could combine my childhood hobby with my professional life.It was really there all along. Photography was something I was supposed to do, but I had a hard time getting here. And even once I decided and was hired, I thought it would be a way to see different parts of life and maybe springboard to a different career.So far, that hasn’t happened — I can’t find anything I like better.
When the government wrongly deports people, coming back to the US is almost impossible
It took 16 years for Herberth Cortez Gaitan to have his asylum case heard, 9 more for him to be deported — and 2 years for him to return to the US after a federal court found that immigration judges had made a mistake.