Anticipating The Butcher

© Oscar McQuillan-Byrne - Image from the Anticipating The Butcher photography project © Oscar McQuillan-Byrne - Image from the Anticipating The Butcher photography project © Oscar McQuillan-Byrne - Image from the Anticipating The Butcher photography project View all images ↓
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  • Dates
    2024 - Ongoing
  • Author
  • Topics Documentary
  • Locations Banyuls-sur-Mer, Pyrénées-Orientales, Portbou, Cerbère
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'Anticipating the Butcher' (2024) looks to retrace the final journey made by Walter Benjamin through the Pyrenees, fleeing Nazism in 1940. The project documents the aftermath of recent French Elections, contemporary refugee routes and Benjamin's ideas.

Anticipating the Butcher (2024) is a documentary photography project by Oscar McQuillan-Byrne retracing the final journey of the German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin. In September 1940, fleeing Nazism, Benjamin reached the Spanish border town of Portbou. Refused entry and facing extradition to Nazi Germany, he chose to end his life.

The project emerges from a response to mounting global conflict and the resurgence of the far-right across Europe. Prompted by Emmanuel Macron’s snap elections and the far-right surge in the 2024 European Parliament vote, McQuillan-Byrne followed the Pyrenean route once carved by anti-fascist resistance fighters like Lisa Fitko. Today, this route is known as “the Walter Benjamin Trail”; now a popular hiking destination, these paths remain active channels for contemporary refugees attempting to cross into “Fortress Europe.”

Anticipating the Butcher unfolds across a border that, in theory, no longer exists. For EU citizens, the line is invisible, yet the train lines leading into Portbou remain heavily policed by border control officers, and refugees are routinely turned back. In photographing this disused border infrastructure, these locations act as sites in which history can now be read. The photographs in this project look to highlight what Benjamin called “the optical unconscious”: the capacity of the camera to reveal latent truths in the everyday world, things we may only dimly apprehend until they are fixed in the frame. By turning directly to the signs, symbols, and marginal images of the borderlands, the project insists on an “optical consciousness” capable of registering the warning signals inscribed in the landscape itself.

Formally, the photobook looks to enact Benjamin’s theory of the constellation—a mode of seeing that assembles fragments into a pattern of historical meaning. The motif of the constellation recurs in the disused Portbou customs hall, its ceiling resembling a night sky or a dismembered European flag. Photographs, found ephemera, and text orbit one another within the photobook, forming a fractured vision of a destabilised Europe struggling with the return of its troubled past.

September 2025 marks 85 years since Benjamin’s final journey. Anticipating the Butcher confronts this anniversary by bringing into focus the fragile line between past catastrophe and the urgencies of today.

© Oscar McQuillan-Byrne - Image from the Anticipating The Butcher photography project
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A telescope that was found on the French coast whilst following 'The Walter Benjamin Trail' across the Pyrenees. Like the camera, a telescope allows individuals to enhance their vision beyond what they can normally see. The telescope invites the viewer to search the landscape and mirrors the function of the camera in this project.

© Oscar McQuillan-Byrne - Image from the Anticipating The Butcher photography project
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This photograph was made in the disused customs hall at Portbou train station. It depicts a night sky design that has been painted on the customs hall ceiling. When dislocated from its surroundings by the camera, the design transforms into a kind of disassembled EU flag that seems to be falling apart at its edges. This photograph is one of several in a series that repeats throughout the book.

© Oscar McQuillan-Byrne - Image from the Anticipating The Butcher photography project
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This image depicts the beginning of 'The Walter Benjamin Trail'. Now a popular hiking route, this trail was established by freedom fighter Lisa Fittko. Fittko and many others used this trail to ferry political refugees over the peaks of the Pyrenees to escape nazi persecution. This trail, amongst others in the region, is still used by contemporary refugees looking to get to Europe.

© Oscar McQuillan-Byrne - Image from the Anticipating The Butcher photography project
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This photograph visualises the political mobilisation of the left within the conservative heartlands of southern France. In the image, one can see posters for the EU Parliamentary elections that have been covered by posters for the French Communist Party. These posters, in turn, have been supplanted by posters for the Left-Wing coalition formed to face off against the far-right in France.

© Oscar McQuillan-Byrne - Image from the Anticipating The Butcher photography project
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Before fleeing Berlin following the rise of Hitler, Benjamin was an avid toy collector and wrote extensively about children's toys, antiques and utilitarian objects. Berlin's coat of arms depicts a black bear with its arms outstretched; this bear, however, looks away with a split down its side and a hole in its head.

© Oscar McQuillan-Byrne - Image from the Anticipating The Butcher photography project
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This photograph documents one of many campaign posters put up by 'Nouveau Front Populaire' (New Popular Front), the left-wing electoral alliance created in June 2024 in order to stand up to the far-right in France. Several images in the project contain these posters.

© Oscar McQuillan-Byrne - Image from the Anticipating The Butcher photography project
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This is one of several postcards collected whilst pursuing Benjamin's final journey. Before he had to flee Germany, Benjamin collected postcards religiously, many of which he reminisces about in his writings during his exile. Benjamin treasured a handsome collection lost when the Gestapo seized his apartment in Berlin. The only postcards that survive him are those he collected whilst on the run.

© Oscar McQuillan-Byrne - Image from the Anticipating The Butcher photography project
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Many border structures between EU states are now defunct. They sit as strange counter monuments, covered in human interventions. This photograph also contains several of the many campaign posters put up by 'Nouveau Front Populaire' (New Popular Front), the left-wing electoral alliance formed in 2024.

© Oscar McQuillan-Byrne - Image from the Anticipating The Butcher photography project
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This photograph was made whilst exploring the disused border infrastructure at the Spanish/French border. The old passport office is now home to a makeshift bed, personal belongings and graffiti.

© Oscar McQuillan-Byrne - Image from the Anticipating The Butcher photography project
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This is a photograph of the photographer's post-Brexit "blue" passport. These new passports were meant to symbolise the UK's newfound sovereignty following the Brexit referendum. They limit the holder to 90 days in Europe, ending free movement for UK citizens. Despite the pitfalls of Brexit, this passport still provides immense privilege over those who would travel to Europe without documents.

© Oscar McQuillan-Byrne - Image from the Anticipating The Butcher photography project
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This photograph is typical of many of the trails along the coast. Within the landscape, many man-made barriers can often be found cutting across paths and trails. Made adjacent to the trail, this photograph illustrates how authorities implement futile structures within an open landscape to mitigate access.

© Oscar McQuillan-Byrne - Image from the Anticipating The Butcher photography project
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Whilst crossing the border into Spain in pursuit of 'The Walter Benjamin Trail,' this image illustrates the contested nature of the region. On this road sign, the word "Catalunya" has been written over "France" with white tape. The next morning, this tape had been removed by authorities.

© Oscar McQuillan-Byrne - Image from the Anticipating The Butcher photography project
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This self-portrait was taken in a Hostel in Portbou after reading the news, following a day of making pictures in the town. Benjamin and his companions were made to stay in a similar hotel in Portbou upon being denied entry into Spain.

© Oscar McQuillan-Byrne - Image from the Anticipating The Butcher photography project
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The project features several photographs of Portbou at night. Similar to the self-portrait, they speak to the night Benjamin spent in Portbou, where he ended his life. A chair left out by locals, facing out to the sea, nobody sits in it, the ocean cannot be seen. This photograph and others were taken while walking at night, a luxury that was not afforded to Benjamin and his companions.

© Oscar McQuillan-Byrne - Image from the Anticipating The Butcher photography project
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This photograph depicts a small, empty stage erected along the waterfront in Portbou. Set in front of a steep cliff face, the stage has Christmas lights attached to it year-round. Taken whilst exploring Portbou at night, this is one of the images that speaks to the night Benjamin spent in Portbou before he took his own life.

© Oscar McQuillan-Byrne - Image from the Anticipating The Butcher photography project
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The inside of the "Sala Walter Benjamin", a makeshift museum set up in Portbou's town hall, features these images, which track Benjamin's life from childhood.

© Oscar McQuillan-Byrne - Image from the Anticipating The Butcher photography project
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This photograph documents part of Dani Karavan's "Passages" monument to Walter Benjamin. On each side of this iron monument, found in Portbou's municipal cemetery, Walter Benjamin's final letter and suicide note are written in multiple languages.

© Oscar McQuillan-Byrne - Image from the Anticipating The Butcher photography project
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Following his death, Benjamin was moved to the municipal cemetery in Portbou. Having been operating under the pseudonym of 'Benjamin Walter, ' he was buried in the Catholic part of the cemetery. Later, his bones would be moved to a shared mass grave for those who were no longer able to pay for their plots. Now, this grave sits amongst those of Portbou's locals.

© Oscar McQuillan-Byrne - Image from the Anticipating The Butcher photography project
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This photograph was taken at Portbou train station, on a lamppost on the middle platform. Porbou has been a sight of pilgrimage for those who want to engage with its history.