Birthdays, first communions, quinceañeras, weddings: photographs of these more personal moments of our lives are most often stored away safely in family photo albums on a high shelf in the closet. Once in a great while, personal history can take on a public life in galleries, and one person's life becomes a window on a world.

This is the magic of Janet Jarman's project "Marisol and the American Dream," on view now in the Vidal Pinto Pasillo of Photography at CECUT. Covering nearly twenty years of the life of Marisol, this photograph series brings us close to the emotional truths of immigration and the common struggle to survive in a changing world. Seventeen years ago, in August 1996, photojournalist Janet Jarman took an assignment to cover the problem of toxic waste materials in Matamoros, Tamaulipas. Wandering through trash dumps in the late afternoon light, Jarman noticed the beautiful face of Marisol, an 8-year-old girl whose family worked recycling trash. Her portrait of Marisol became the beginning of a long-term relationship between the two women.

Marisol and her family eventually moved from Mexico to Florida, and then to Texas, and over the years she allowed the photographer to document her immigrant experience, the discrimination and fear, the joys and triumphs of a new life, the disappointments and challenges of losing a home, divorce, family separation.

With her cameras, Janet Jarman thinks of photojournalism as a powerful medium of social participation: "I see with my eye, my mind and my heart. I take photographs with the intention of doing something significant." The face of Marisol, which has been all around the world, has become a corrective to the hate and an invitation to reconsider the immigration debate from a more human starting point.

By looking at Marisol's life over time, Jarman givers her viewers a rare opportunity to form an emotional connection and appreciation of immigration through one woman's personal history. Marisol represents millions of women migrants who cross the border in search of the American Dream. It is the complexity of history, expressed through the photograph, that can lend a face and bring genuine emotion to the statistics of Latino immigration to the United States.

Janet Jarman was born in Richmond, Virginia and has lived in Mexico since 2003. She has published her work in The New York Times, The Washington Post and Der Spiegel, among others.

As suggested by Adriana Malvido, the curator of the exhibit, "Jarman's project with Marisol is her most personal, perhaps because of the deep connection between the young Mexican girl and the American artist. Their lives, experiences and cultures are entwined. They belong to both countries. And both women hope to see a world of equality where social and cultural barriers cease to exist."

Jarman's exhibit will remain on view through March 2015 in the Vidal Pinto Pasillo de Fotografía at the Tijuana Cultural Center (CECUT).

Admission is free of charge.

jill.holslin@sandiegored.com