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"Border Horizons" Doris Frohnapfel The slide projection comprises pictures of border architecture and landscapes, which the photographer Doris Frohnapfel has selected from a collection of more than 5000 photographs. Frohnapfel’s view on border architecture is markedly unspectacular. In contrast to the euphoria for a Brussels’ Europe, the photographs portray the dreariness of frontier spaces, without specifying the locations: mostly deserted marks made of concrete, fences or bars, bare fields, meadows, straits or miles long truck queues. Over a couple of years’ time, Doris Frohnapfel has photographed international borders, mostly exterior borders of the European Union and Schengen borders. The pictures range from Istanbul and Ceuta as the southernmost spots to Raja-Jooseppi, one of the northernmost posts between Finland and Russia. She also documents the course of the new borders, their construction and the consequent historical change of border landscapes, which is a result of many countries having joined the EU. Among these new frontiers are those in the Baltic countries, or the harbour in Bergen, which has only recently been palisaded like a stronghold, since Norway belongs to the Schengen countries but not to the EU, while Great Britain, as a member of the EU, did not ratify the Schengen treaty. Another new border is the Oder-Neisse line, which had at first been the frontier between the blocks, was then transformed into a EU border, afterwards a Schengen border. These images also confront the viewers with the boundaries of their own perception. To a certain degree, one is held at a distance from the border – exactly the security distance that Frohnapfel herself had to keep so as not to risk violating the grey area of illegality, or having her camera confiscated. The project is accompanied by manifold texts and is available as a book: Artist, born 1959, lives and works in Cologne. |
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