Of Plastic Palms and Mistletoes

Following the question how the presence of war is tangible in its absence OF PLASTIC PALMS AND MISTLETOES is a photographic study of Ukraine's western external borders and a document of a changing area.

In Ukraine's neighbouring countries the Russian war of aggression is closer than ever. And yet it remains mostly invisible.

"Everything has changed!" a Polish border guard tells me in March 2022. "Nothing has changed," a hotelier replies. In Transnistria Russia is the saviour and I'm a spy. As a photojournalist I am not welcome here, but as a photo artist I am, my fixer tells me. The project highlights the contradiction and confusion between everyday life and conflict and a change of the culture from west to east. The photographs – always empty of people – work like notes, trying to grasp an area that is changing. Where is the war spilling over the border? Where can you feel it and where not? Does it change the access to landscape and infrastructure? How is it being represented in public? Will the border even shift in a few years, for better or for worse? So far, two journeys have taken me along the Ukrainian border to Poland and one to Transnistria. Everywhere I travelled I sensed an uncertain tension over the question of how long the present war will remain absent.

With the support of the PhMuseum Grant, I am following the Ukrainian external borders in Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and the Republic of Moldova. I will continue to research where, how and if the Russian war of aggression is leaving a visual mark on Ukraine's neighbouring countries.