Sometimes the Border Blooms

Sometimes the Border Blooms, 2023-ongoing

This series takes a closer look at a border, a closer look at what a border looks like in a landscape, away from border crossings, and how nature deals with imposed border infrastructure. Borders are places where countries meet and where their territories are both joined and separated. Physically, borders are places where countries come closest together, yet at the same time they are divided.

Sometimes the Border Blooms focuses on a section of the border between Poland and Ukraine, and Poland and Belarus, the very eastern edge of the European Union and NATO, and the questionable line of division between the East and the West in Europe. In summer 2021, the border between Poland and Belarus became the site of a stand-off between the two countries with refugees from across the globe caught up in between and subjected to pushbacks. This is the closest the refugees came to the end of their lengthy and dangerous journeys, the closest to safety, the closest to their dreams of freedom, the closest to the European Union. Later that year, Poland introduced a state of emergency within the borderlands, cutting off access to the area. During the state of emergency, lasting until the end of 2022, the border zone has been transformed into a militarised zone. Polish Armed Forces rolled out concertinas of razor wire along the western bank of the river Bug to deter refugees. Many ecological organisations demanded the removal of the razor wire from the delicate and dynamic ecosystem of the river. The razor wire largely remains, and in 2022 a wire fence has been added, which has been gradually colonised by species of plants and animals. In summer, the stark barrier blooms. The nature is learning how to live with the border infrastructure, the artificial edge, the steel line in the landscape, is merging with the natural edge of the riverbank.

Sometimes the Border Blooms, a series of medium format analogue photographs taken with Mamiya RZ67 and a range of colour film stock, looks at the power of nature to overcome human interventions, to erase arbitrary borders, to bring life back to places subjected to violence and destruction.