28 images Created 15 May 2018
Crossing Lines
While most international borders are constructs of the human imagination and are invisible from space, their impact on earth is very real. For climate refugees, for those fleeing conflict or persecution, for economic refugees from failed states, borders are often a significant hurdle in the journey for survival or the search for a better life. They can even be the demarcation between life and death.
Some borders seem to be dissolving : corporations are multinational, trade is global, communication technology is shrinking relative distances, more and more people share a common language and travel the globe, races and cultures are mixing. However, nation-states make their own rules and can generate opposition to these phenomena. Nationalist and ultranationalist movements, racism and even ethnic cleansing strive to counter globalization. Are these the death rattles of an antiquated system or the reassertion of a necessary and unalienable power structure?
Having often been drawn by forces that we now consider criminal - colonialism in Africa and Asia or the genocide of native peoples of North America, for example - many borders seem hard to justify morally. What right did colonists have to take another people’s land? What right do they have to refuse entry to the land their ancestors took at gunpoint?
How do we understand the tension between human rights and national sovereignty? Does a nation have rights, just as an individual does? Who has the right to refuse another person in need, a victim? What are the rights of non-citizens? What is the relationship between international law and the laws of sovereign nations? How do victims of human rights violations seek justice beyond their own borders? These questions will become more pressing in the current context of climate change, globalization, the sharp division between rich and poor, and a growing refugee crisis, problems that by definition transcend national borders.
In her final reflections on documentary photography, Susan Sontag wrote: « What is called collective memory is not a remembering but a stipulating: that this is important, and this is the story about how it happened, with the pictures that lock the story in our minds. » Photographers Darren Ell and Roger LeMoyne have spent many years on the front lines of the struggle between individual rights, the individual’s will to survive and the powers of nation-states. Each photographer has a distinct approach to their subject matter but the concerns that fuel their work bind the two separate visions into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. By combining their various bodies of work, the photographers raise important questions and illuminate some of the key issues that must be understood and debated as we navigate the current refugee crisis.
Some borders seem to be dissolving : corporations are multinational, trade is global, communication technology is shrinking relative distances, more and more people share a common language and travel the globe, races and cultures are mixing. However, nation-states make their own rules and can generate opposition to these phenomena. Nationalist and ultranationalist movements, racism and even ethnic cleansing strive to counter globalization. Are these the death rattles of an antiquated system or the reassertion of a necessary and unalienable power structure?
Having often been drawn by forces that we now consider criminal - colonialism in Africa and Asia or the genocide of native peoples of North America, for example - many borders seem hard to justify morally. What right did colonists have to take another people’s land? What right do they have to refuse entry to the land their ancestors took at gunpoint?
How do we understand the tension between human rights and national sovereignty? Does a nation have rights, just as an individual does? Who has the right to refuse another person in need, a victim? What are the rights of non-citizens? What is the relationship between international law and the laws of sovereign nations? How do victims of human rights violations seek justice beyond their own borders? These questions will become more pressing in the current context of climate change, globalization, the sharp division between rich and poor, and a growing refugee crisis, problems that by definition transcend national borders.
In her final reflections on documentary photography, Susan Sontag wrote: « What is called collective memory is not a remembering but a stipulating: that this is important, and this is the story about how it happened, with the pictures that lock the story in our minds. » Photographers Darren Ell and Roger LeMoyne have spent many years on the front lines of the struggle between individual rights, the individual’s will to survive and the powers of nation-states. Each photographer has a distinct approach to their subject matter but the concerns that fuel their work bind the two separate visions into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. By combining their various bodies of work, the photographers raise important questions and illuminate some of the key issues that must be understood and debated as we navigate the current refugee crisis.
