Under the wall. Border images

Linda Vukaj is a photographer and director who works between photography, documentary film and visual communication, interested in portraiture and social documentary. www.lindavukaj.com

March 2016.

Jerusalem. Bethlehem.

Every day, I crossed the checkpoint.

A passage through concrete, metal, gates, waiting, silence.

On the other side, Sister Donatella Lessio and the Caritas Baby Hospital, only a short distance from the wall.

But the wall was never simply in the background.

It was there.

A physical presence.
A line drawn across the landscape.
Across roads.
Across fields.
Across homes.
Across lives.

To cross it on foot is to feel its weight.

The narrow corridors.
The controls.
The pauses.
The uncertainty.

Every morning, every evening, people move through it on their way to work, to return home, to continue with the ordinary gestures of daily life.

And every Friday, beneath that same wall, Sister Donatella gathers with other sisters and friends to pray the Rosary.

Concrete and prayer.

Separation and presence.

Fear and persistence.

This work was born from those crossings.

From the distance between one side and the other.

From the people who live beside the wall, under its shadow, through its gates.

A wall that divides land.

A wall that divides streets.

A wall that divides families.

And yet, every day, people keep crossing.