“Dear Clara, how do borders look like in your Europe? In your future? Here in the 21st century, perhaps we Europeans have taken them for granted. But they rise and fall all the time, in big and little ways. They have shaped us, they shape you. Here are some stories, Clara, and some photos. There are all different kinds of things here: photos from across Europe now; stories and images from archives about our shared and divided history; images I’ve made to show you our time. Images about wars, refugees, travellers, and those who tell their grandparents’ stories; fraught crossings, and joyful meetings. Other images created to explore the miracle of the everyday, the wonders of life that transcends science and the explainable. The little things that bind us together across nations. I’m still collecting, still talking to people across Europe, for them to tell their stories. This project will never really be done. Clara, my daughter’s daughter’s daughter, this is about the lines that divide and connect us – for you.”
For Clara is a photographic and written exploration about borders in Europe – past, present, and future. In it, photographer and writer, Anders Birger, draws together a world of stories, both real and retold, to show us how borders shape our lives and our identity. In the same way that borders are never static, this work is amorphous. It lives as an online archive, where new interviews and images are gathered continuously from those who have something to tell us about borders. It is also an editable box book, containing photographs and words that can be reordered and rediscovered again and again. In some ways, Halls of Lost Steps, is a simple traveller’s tale: Anders in his car crossing and recrossing the borders of Europe to talk to its citizens and its outcasts. In other ways, it’s a world within a world that invites us to encounter the limits of what we call our national identity and where we are all headed.
This project aims to give its viewers a greater understanding of how our national identity is shaped by borders. By playfully challenging the perception of borders as static entities, Anders try to dislodge the audience’s faith in their own nationalism, reminding them that we have all been travellers at one point in history and that we all once came from somewhere else.
The project consists of a range of ever expandable chapters, each dealing with a new topic within the spectrum of borders. Along with these, Anders presents us with images photographed on his extensive travels throughout Europe. Through a rolling exhibition taking place in his car, Anders’ mission is to show the work outside the normative institutions, while continiously collect new stories, statements and images to add to the work. Like history, this work will be ever evolving.
