Under the Palm Trees

Attempting the question if and how the presence of the war is tangible in its absence, Under the Palm Trees is a series of photographs along Ukraine's western external borders – the geographical line that currently separates Europe from the war.

"There is something disturbingly surprising about Eastern Europe. Coming from the west, it seems a little out of time, and this allows a variety of new connections to be made to a nostalgic and imaginary world in a somehow dystopian present. A rich diversity of culture lays forgotten on the table of politics and so it begins to part different ways.

While the war in Ukraine rages in the background of this work, I was always also looking for other realities happening at the same time. The plastic palm trees on the military outpost of a vacation village; a beautifully dressed woman in an Orthodox monastery next to a vacuum cleaner; a broken-down car drowning in the floodwaters at the diner as if it were sleeping in the Mississippi; the song Life is Life playing on the radio while bushes scrape the outside of our car as the driver dodges potholes at high speed on the road to Odessa; or simply the beautiful landscape of a riverbank in the dim morning light that is forbidden to photograph. Like the smoke coming out of that tree, this work is my note of that time."

Under the Palm Trees takes up the subject of war and conflict in a form that goes far beyond the narratives of traditional photojournalism. It explores the possibilities and limits of what can be depicted and attempts the question if and how the presence of war is tangible in its absence.

The photographs were taken between 2022 and 2024 with an analog large-format camera in Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Moldova, the Russian separatist state of Transnistria, and the autonomous region of Gagauzia.