On Borders

Jörg Brüggemann, Espen Eichhöfer, Sibylle Fendt, Annette Hauschild, Harald Hauswald, Pepa Hristova, Tobias Kruse, Ute Mahler, Werner Mahler, Dawin Meckel, Thomas Meyer, Julian Röder, Frank Schinski, Jordis Antonia Schlösser, Anne Schoenharting, Linn Schröder, Heinrich Völkel, Maurice Weiss

They offer protection, give rise to war, limit freedom or make it possible in the first place. They have always existed and always will. Hardly any other theme is as ambivalent, as timeless or as relevant as borders. The OSTKREUZ agency was established on the disappearance of one of the most important borders in the history of humankind, the Berlin Wall. Two decades later, the agency’s photographers have initiated a search for the borders that are important today. They tell of the creation of a new state, Southern Sudan; they portray indigenous peoples who are fighting for their land in Canada and gay Palestinian men who seek exile in the enemy country, Israel. They look behind the façades of the International Criminal Court in The Hague and give a face to ‘tolerated’ foreign residents in Berlin. The focus in the pictures is always on people. How do borders influence people’s day-to-day lives and how do they organise their lives along the borders that surround them? Where do borders protect human rights, and where do they threaten them?