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Dear viewer, Borders have never gone out of fashion. They are not relics of the past, but constant parts of our everyday lives. Images of borders are being imprinted onto our retinas all the time: Made out of barbed wire and concrete, shifted, guarded and militarised, technological or natural, free and unregulated, or simply in the form of buffer zones and checkpoints, borders are everywhere. With the idea of a borderless world still an improbable dream, the beta edition of the photographic newsletter europeanimages — a collaboration between n-ost (GE), Kajet Journal (RO) and AthensLive (GR) — focuses on all the different types of borders in Europe, their aesthetics, their pasts, and their futures.
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Petrica, Laura (Kajet), Angelos, Sotiris (AthensLive), Ramin, Pia and Stefan (n-ost) from the editorial team
Please give us your feedback on this newsletter using the link (here and below the imprint). In Gmail the mail is often trimmed: Please click the link at the end of the mail to see the whole newsletter or click here to read it in your browser
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Title Image above: CLOSED BORDER BETWEEN AUSTRIA AND GERMANY DURING THE FIRST COVID LOCKDOWN. FLORIAN BACHMEIER (MUNICH) FOR HIS CORONAVIRUS DIARIES, APRIL 2020.
Title Image below: INTERNATIONAL BORDER GUARD TRAINING ORGANIZED BY HUNGARIAN POLICE AND MILITARY FORCES IN VESZPREM, SOUTH OF HUNGARY. RAFAL MILACH (WARSAW) FOR HIS BOOK “I AM WARNING YOU”, OCTOBER 2019.
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Seeing
BORDERS
Single Images by Photographers
From All over Europe
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UKRAINE I OCCUPIED TERRITORY
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UKRAINIAN SOLDIER OLEKSANDAR WATCHES RUSSIAN BACKED SEPARATIST POSITIONS AT THE FRONT LINE NEAR AVDIIVKA. OKSANA PARAFENIUK (KYIV) FOR “LIBERATION”, APRIL 2021.
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THIS COUGH PILL IS LEGALLY PURCHASED IN BOGATYNIA, POLAND, BROUGHT ACROSS THE BORDER TO THE CZECH REPUBLIC, WHERE IT IS PROCESSED INTO CRYSTAL METH. PAWEL STARZEC (WARSAW) FOR HIS SERIES ON SILESIA REGION, AUGUST 2021.
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TOURISTS AT THE AUSTRIAN-HUNGARIAN BORDER. THIS SPOT, NEAR SOPRON, WAS WHERE THE SO-CALLED PAN-EUROPEAN PICNIC TOOK PLACE IN AUGUST 1989. VALERIO VINCENZO (NAPLES) FOR HIS SERIES „BORDERLINE - FRONTIERS OF PEACE”, NOVEMBER 2014.
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A BORDER FENCE AND OBSERVATION POST IN RÖSZKE: THE 180 KILOMETRE HUNGARIAN-SERBIAN FENCE WAS ERECTED IN 2015 TO PREVENT REFUGEES CROSSING THE BORDER. PAUL S. AMUNDSEN (BERGEN) FOR HIS ONGOING WORK “EUROPE”, APRIL 2017.
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ACCESS WAS AND STILL IS RESTRICTED FOR JOURNALISTS AND ACTIVISTS ON THE POLISH BORDER WITH BELARUS. MACIEJ MOSKWA (GDANSK) FOR “TESTIGO”, AUGUST 2021.
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THE BORDER BETWEEN LITHUANIA AND BELARUS IN THE SMALL VILLAGE OF PAŠALČIS FIVE YEARS AGO. NOWADAYS THE BORDER BETWEEN THE COUNTRIES IS SECURED BY A 4-METRE FENCE TO STOP MIGRANTS. JASPER WALTER BASTIAN (DORTMUND) FOR HIS SERIES “A ROAD NOT TAKEN”, 2016.
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AN AFGHAN REFUGEE REACHES THE COAST OF LESBOS. THE SEA BORDER WITH TURKEY IS ONLY 5 KILOMETRES AWAY AT THIS POINT. ANGELOS CHRISTOFILOPOULOS (ATHENS) FOR “ATHENS LIVE”, OCTOBER 2015.
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A GROUP OF REFUGEES WALKS BETWEEN NORTH MACEDONIA AND SERBIA ALONG WHAT BECAME KNOWN AS THE BALKAN ROUTE. MARKO RISOVIC (BELGRAD) FOR “KAMERADES”, JULY 2016.
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ALEXANDER, A YOUNG MAN LIVING IN RYBNIZA, IN THE NORTH OF TRANSNISTRIA, GAZES OVER THE BORDER TOWARDS MOLDOVA. RAMIN MAZUR (CHIȘINĂU) FOR HIS SERIES ABOUT LIFE IN TRANSNISTRIA, APRIL 2013.
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Exploring
BORDERS
A Closer Look at a
Photographer's Series
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A series from 2017 on the absurd consequences of the border shifts between Georgia and the disputed territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia by Daro Sulakauri (Tbilisi)
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Tengo Mikava, a 57-year-old fisherman, was kidnapped near the village of Tkhaia by Russian soldiers. “I was fishing when they quietly crept behind my back and pointed the gun at my feet and told me to move,"he said. "I was taken to Gali in Sbkhazia and fined for illegally crossing the border.”
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Locals in the village of Orsantia, near the breakaway state of Abkhazia.
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A child takes a swim in the Enguri river near the village of Orsantia, which is used as the border to the separatist territory of Abkhazia.
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Selfies of best friends separated by the Enguri river. The village of Khurcha is controlled by Georgia, while the neighbouring village of Habakevi is now a Russian base in the partially recognized state of Abkhazia. Once in a while they call each other on the phone and meet near a barbed wire fence that marks the border.
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The house located in the village of Dvani belongs to the Makhatchashvili family. When viewed by google maps, the house is divided by the Russian “borderization”, showing the house and its land split in two. "My living room is on the side of the occupied territory, so I will invite you to the Russian controlled territory in my living room and in the kitchen you we will be in Georgia, " jokes Makhatchashvili, the owner of the house, who lives with his wife, parents, and three children. The village of Dvani village is located next to the breakaway region of South Ossetia.
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What does it mean to literally live on a border and be perpetually on the verge of losing something as fundamental as your home? What does it mean to wake up and find your living room in one country and your kitchen in another, divided by borders that were drawn overnight? Some villagers at the borders of the breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia are going through this exact situation, as the border moves according to the arbitrary rules of geopolitical power games. Georgian photojournalist Daro Sulakauri embarked on a journey to document this absurd shifts of borders by expanding the possibilities of photography as a medium: Her series, entitled “House Divided”, mixes selfies, moving images, cartographic projections, and artefacts such as found images and paintings, revealing the absurdity that new borders can cause.
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Reflecting
BORDERS
A Critical Observation on
How Images are Used
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PUBLISHED BY POLISH PUBLIC BROADCASTER “TVP INFO” ON 15.11.2021.
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PUBLISHED BY THE BELARUSIAN STATE-OWNED NEWS AGENCY “BELTA”.
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These images (by the same photographer) illustrate how the viewer can be consciously and unconsciously influenced by a subtle choice of images: The first image — a screenshot from the national Polish news platform TVP info— shows migrants at the border in large numbers as a threatening block almost filling the picture, faced by a (few) Polish forces. The decision to publish this image reinforces the dominant narrative in Poland - of foreign invaders entering the country. The second image, on a Belarusian news platform, shows Polish task forces in action against migrants waiting at the border. The number of people trying to cross seems small, also due to the cropping of the picture, while the deployment of the water cannon against them looks aggressive. This image supports the narrative of the Lukashenko regime in Belarus, which accuses Poland of using violence to prevent migrants from reaching their supposed destination, Germany.
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Reading
BORDERS
A Short European Essay
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Can we live in a borderless world?
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Is Europe ready to live in a borderless world? This is a question that has been posed since before the launch of the Schengen Area in the mid-1990s. The answer then, and for the decade that followed, appeared to have been a definitive yes. Today, however, Europe is seemingly providing a new answer to the question of borders; that Europeans do not want to live in a borderless world.
One way of understanding the Greek myth of the woman named Europa – a Phoenician princess seduced by Zeus – and the bull is the need to go beyond one’s borders, to find one’s identity. In this sense, Europa, in other words Europe, equals boundlessness. The French philosopher Jacques Derrida claimed that an identity is never defined and Europe thus means a permanent search for self and identity. In today’s context this could be understood as Heimat and the universal values given to the world in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in 1789 after the French Revolution. In this respect it is worth remembering that the very idea of the European project was to overcome national borders. This task has two dimensions today: Europe’s internal borders and its external borders; both of which are celebrating a comeback lately.
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“Today, however, Europe is seemingly providing a new answer to the question of borders; that Europeans do not want to live in a borderless world.”
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The truth is that we are living in a borderless world and we do not want to change that. “The world is flat”, wrote Thomas Friedman in 2001. We want the gas for our heating from Russia or Algeria and we want to fly to Hong Kong for Christmas. We want Africa’s resources, such as diamonds for our luxurious jewellery, and chia seeds from Latin America for the vegan lifestyle of European hipsters, while cheap electronics come from China for the not so wealthy. In fact, we want our borders open for trade, but not for people and that is the European dilemma. The most famous chart of the last decade – the “elephant curve” – perfectly illustrates two things: first, statistically globalisation is beneficial and produces growth. Second, it does not benefit everyone evenly.
We need to remind ourselves that the idea of the European project was to go beyond borders and overcome the nation-state. At least within Europe we should continue to be the avant-garde of this idea, the real-life laboratory for an ultimately universal goal: a global union of citizens which in 1792 Immanuel Kant already saw as the way to achieve perpetual peace.
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Excerpt from a text originally published in EUROZINE)
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Transforming
BORDERS
A European Photo Series
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Disused border checkpoints throughout Europe beetween 2004 and 2008 by Joseph Schulz
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The documentary style and decontextualization reduce these border posts to a model. Architectural ideas and contemporary tastes from the different countries become perceptible. The checkpoints appear as lost guardians, as faded memorials to a defunct division. They become reminders of what has not yet been achieved and of the fact that one day they could easily be used again.
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Excerpt from the description of Joseph Schulz for his series Übergang
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Counting
BORDERS
A Record of
European Figures
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Height of European border fences:
3-4m
Lithuania ↹ Belarus
begin in 2021, planned length 500km, costs about 150 Million Euro
5,5m
Poland ↹ Belarus
begin in January 2022 planned length about 200km, costs more than 350 Million Euro
3m
Hungary ↹ Serbia
built in 2015, length 175 km, costs about 115 Million Euro
6m
Spain ↹ Morocco
built in 1993 and heightened in 2005, length 24 km, costs about 70 Million Euro
3,5 - 4m
Berlin ↹ West Berlin
built 1961, destroyed 1989, length about 170 km, costs some millions of GDR Marks
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Figures researched by Sotiris Sideris and Angelos Christofilopoulos (AthensLive),
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THE LOCATIONS OF THIS ISSUE
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Photographers: Florian Bachmeier, Rafał Milach, Valerio Vincenzo, Paweł Starzec, Marko Risovic, Oksana Parafeniuk, Florian Bachmaier, Maciej Moskwa, Paul S. Amundsen, Jasper Walter Bastian, Angelos Christofilopoulos, Ramin Mazur, Daro Sulakauri, Josef Schulz.
Editorial team: Laura Naum and Petrică Mogoș (Kajet Journal), Sotiris Sideris and Angelos Christofilopoulos (AthensLive), Stefan Günther and Pia Telebuh (n-ost) and Ramin Mazur.
Design: Philipp Blombach
Copy Editing: Ben Knight
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Your opinion is important to us, so we would be very happy to hear your feedback. Please click here!
This is the first edition of european images, a project by n-ost, in partnership with Kajet Journal (RO), AthensLive (GR) and Pismo (PL) supported by Allianz Kulturstiftung and the Foundation for Polish-German Cooperation.
Coordinated by n-ost, documentary photographers will meet once a month throughout the entire period of the project.
If you are a European photographer and want to join the meeting or provide images for the publication please write a short introduction of your work to europeanimages@n-ost.org.
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initiated and coordinated
by n-ost
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You've received this email because you are a member or a friend of n-ost, AthensLive, Kajet, Pismo or Ramin.
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