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Polish Photographer Documents Europe’s Abandoned Borders

With everything that’s been occurring in Europe lately and the EU fighting to cope with the biggest wave of migrants and refugees its ever known, it’s exciting to discover Polish photographer Josef Schulz’s Übergang series.

Interestingly, each former checkpoint no longer belongs to anywhere. They just sit, going to waste with broken windows, rusty doors and peeling paint – merging the past with the present. And although the border police are long gone, and the buildings themselves are quite harmless, they still provoke an unsettling feeling – potentially conjuring up bad memories of the past when Europe was divided by borders.

He states: “Borders were lines, drawn not only from territories but also through our heads.”

This particularly holds true for Schulz, as he hopes his series will highlight how these physical traces of borders are impossible to forget.

 

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