On Borders

Editor: Ostkreuz – Agentur der Fotografen
Graphic design: Jan Spading
English/German
296 pp., 160 ills.
23,20 x 28,20 cm, softcover
Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2012
ISBN: 978-3-7757-3431-8
Trade edition: € 38,00

Available at bookstores and online at Hatje Cantz Verlag

Texts by Andrea Böhm, Wolfgang Büscher, Fabian Dietrich, Anna-Christina Hartmann, and Marcus Jauer

They offer protection, lead to war, limit freedom, or make it possible; they have always been there and they will continue to exist: borders. Hardly anything else is as socially ambivalent, as timeless, and simultaneously as extremely relevant. The Ostkreuz agency was founded when what was probably the most important border in the history of Germany—the Berlin Wall—disappeared. Two decades later, the agency’s photographers set out on a search for today’s frontiers. Their pictures tell of discovering a state identity in South Sudan; they portray groups of indigenous peoples battling for their land in Canada and gay people in Palestine seeking exile in the enemy country of Israel. The focus is always on people: how do boundaries influence their everyday lives, and how do they shape their lives along those that surround them?

The presented artists:
Jörg Brüggemann, Espen Eichhöfer, Sibylle Fendt, Annette Hauschild, Harald Hauswald, Pepa Hristova, Tobias Kruse, Ute & Werner Mahler, Dawin Meckel, Thomas Meyer, Julian Röder, Frank Schinski, Jordis Antonia Schlösser, Anne Schönharting, Linn Schröder, Heinrich Völkel, and Maurice Weiss