Breathtaking beauty on the border.

• Position: Photo exhibition, Tupper Ansel Blake, Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, Illinois

BRIGHTLY PLUMAGED BIRDS, delicate butterflies, playful prairie dogs, majestic elk, and curious toads share nature's bounty along the U.S.-Mexican border with man. Mistakingly considered a drab, uncolorful area, the region is rich in verdant valleys, awesome volcanoes, and shimmering deserts, all punctuated by awesome sunrises and sunsets.

"Two Eagles/Dos Aguilas: A Natural History of the Mexico-U.S. Borderlands," organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and The Nature Conservancy, features 130 color pictures by well-known naturalist and wildlife photographer Tupper Ansel Blake. From 1989 to 1992, nearly 150 years after the border was drawn between the U.S. and Mexico, he conducted a photographic survey of the 100-mile path along the 1,951-mile-long border that stretches from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico.

"I have found that people generally see the U.S.-Canada border in a more positive light than they do the U.S.-Mexico border, which often translates as a hostile, dry, and hot land, with sand, cactus, and scorpions," Blake points out. "In reality, this region teems with unexpected beauty and a great variety of landscapes, plants, and animals."

The title of the exhibition is reflective of the importance of eagles to the native peoples of the region. Moreover, eagles are the national emblems of both the U.S. and Mexico. The American bald eagle ranges north to the Arctic, while the caracara, or Mexican eagle, ranges south to the tip of South America. They overlap in the 100-mile zone on either side of the Mexico-U.S. border.

"Two Eagles/Dos Aguilas" focuses on the area dividing the countries. Known as the borderlands, the region lies across the middle of North America where the tropics meet the Temperate Zone. There, plants and animals indigenous to each zone intermingle with species that thrive only in this setting.

The borderlands are more than desert, as Blake discovered through his photographic documentation of the region. The great variety of vegetation and wildlife, combined with the equally varied climate and topography--coasts, riversides, towering mountains, valleys, and arid desert plains--has created startling landscapes and unparalleled natural diversity.

Once considered barren and forbidding by explorers, the...