Borders have become a key focus in politics and media, often shown through crisis-driven imagery. Cultural projects like I’ll let you be in my dreams if you let me be in yours and Bilateral offer a counter-narrative, highlighting the everyday life and complexity of borderlands. Through art and photography, they present borders as spaces of connection, not just division.
In the past decade the topic of borders has become central in the global political debate. Borders kill and inflict suffering upon an increasing number of people fleeing their countries: in 2024, the number of people on the move who died or went missing while attempting to cross borders reached record levels globally. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), at least 8,938 deaths were recorded during the year, marking the fifth consecutive year of rising fatalities.
At the same time, borders are also increasingly instrumentalised, mainly by right-wing politicians, as a propaganda tool. The attention to and use of border imagery is on the rise accordingly: in the first half of 2024, for instance, in the United States alone, as reported by the Washington Post, over 247 million dollars was spent on television, streaming, and digital ads mentioning immigration—more than any other issue. A figure that gains even more significance considering the attention economy we live in.
In Europe, after the 2015 so-called refugee “crisis”, several member countries, such as Hungary and Poland, started shaping the narration of migration as crisis and capitalising on the fear that was generated as a consequence. In the US, the 2016 Trump election campaign was largely based on building a wall with Mexico, reclaiming the narrative of immigration as a threat, and giving a further boost to division and borderisaton policies.
BORDERS, MIGRATION, IMAGES AND THE PRODUCTION OF MEANING
In a communication system mostly based on catchphrases, catchy slogans and especially on images, the debate around how migration, people on the move and borders are portrayed in the media has acquired significant relevance. A study conducted by Wired in 2019 analysing several European media found that over 75% of migration-related media items were images, and the majority followed the “crisis visual narrative” — masses, border control, or distress.
A 2020 analysis by UNHCR and World Press Photo found that in most award-winning photojournalism migration images focused on suffering and exclusion, less on integration or resilience. Paradoxically, victimization seems to be the best option. In this context, artists and photographers seem to be stepping up to reshape the narrative, to create a different, powerful image not only of migrants and refugees, but of borders themselves too.
I’LL LET YOU BE IN MY DREAMS IF YOU LET ME BE IN YOURS
From 2018 to 2023, photographers and long-time partners Carolyn Drake and Andres Gonzalez embarked in five-year-long project on the border between Mexico and the United States. The result translated into the photobook I’ll let you be in my dreams if you let me be in yours, published by MACK in 2024.
The project, although most photographs are landscapes and cropped images rather than conventional portraits, is profoundly humane. Each shot was carefully staged, and yet, put together they capture that kind of spontaneity that can be found in spaces that live along borderlines. By focusing on details, shapes, objects and landscape, the photographers present the viewer with a radically different narrative on the border, refusing the danger of the single story, giving back a more complex picture of the subject. It is significant in the same way that the project was undertaken by a duo – further refusing the singular narrative, adding and confronting perspectives.
LIMINAL SPACES: PHOTOGRAPHING THE BORDER
If many, especially in recent years since 2015, have used documentary photography to depict refugees and people on the move, it has been – still is – less common to find projects focusing on borders in their physical dimension. Both studies and artworks focusing on the representation of migrants are widespread – but what about the physical spaces?
What of the border cities and towns – the backdrops against which the narrative we choose to set up on migration takes place? Borders are liminal spaces, lands in-between. Often places of exchange, where resistance practices and active solidarity find room, next to violence and suffering. Again, the image of the border is generally associated with heavy infrastructures, fences, control and surveillance tools. It is exactly this imagery that Drake and Gonzales manage to challenge – replacing it with a new one. Inserting beauty in the picture – and the pictures may be staged, but there’s nothing artificial about the kind of rough, spontaneous beauty they capture along the 3000 km long US – Mexican border. It is the beauty of whatever crosses it.
“When we arrived and drove along the wall, we heard music coming from homes on the other side, » says Gonzales, «found animal trails crossing over, children going to school on one side and living on the other, [and saw] a robust cross-border economy around second-hand goods”. In a word: life.
The moments captured by Drake and Gonzales are everything but fixed – quite the opposite: they show the dynamic nature of borderlands. Far from being as fixed, monolithic and immutable as the mainstream imagery depicts them, borders in fact move and change continuously.
Names and authorships were not specified, further adding complexity: “This project was all about leaving room for the other person’s ego or experience to exist alongside our own,” Drake told Magnum, “We had to force ourselves to make only half a picture in the hope that we could eventually combine the two into one. After teaching ourselves to let go of total authorship, it didn’t make sense to go back and point out who made which image. Same with the locations. We wanted to consider the borderlands as borderlands, not as separate countries”.
The result is a deep, delicate and incisive investigation that unavoidably compels the viewer to reconsider what borders mean.
BORDERS AS POLITICAL PRODUCTS IN SAMUEL GRATACAP’S BILATERAL
Borders, suggests French photographer Samuel Gratacap, adding to the conversation, are also a product of politics. Gratacap’s Bilateral is the result of a 2-year-long project in the Valley of Montgenevre, spanning – on both sides of the Alps – borders between Italy and France. A route chosen by many to try and reach continental Europe after arriving in Italy either crossing the Mediterranean or through the Balkans.
Gratacap’s approach intended, as he himself explains, to “represent those who struggle to make the world less violent by mobilizing in the places where they live, as a way of repairing violence: when exile meets hospitality”. And to do so “in a climate of mistrust of the media and more particularly of imagery”, by trying to photograph and especially listen to people populating both sides of the border. To protect their identities, often at risk in a political environment where solidarity activists are increasingly targeted, similarly to Drake and Gonzales, Gratacap choses to mostly focus on details and landscapes.
In this case, though, politics are also made to fit into the picture. Somewhat held accountable: “decision-makers must also be shown, they are exhibited elsewhere and differently, in secret rooms or during international meetings on a large media scale. They are interchangeable, faceless. They vote on immigration laws at EU level and are also able to sign agreements with third countries, outside Europe, to outsource migration management. Behind the satisfaction of their poses and looks, they encourage violence and discrimination”.
ART’S REACH – CONSTRICTING MEANING BEYOND CURRENT EVENTS
Taking time, in way, is a luxury that a certain kind of art practice can afford. In turn, in a fast-paced world, spending time, observing, listening, changing opinion, asking questions, gives the possibility to build a more complex, nuanced picture. When it comes to newsworthy topics like borders, the collective vision risks being shaped by fast-paced means only. On the contrary, art can help creating new, more profound and layered meaning. Projects like I’ll let you be in my dreams if you let me be in yours and Bilateral point exactly to this direction.
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