The European Fortress

Eva Leitolf sent me a copy of her book on migration and the edges of Western Europe. It's called Postcards from Europe. 

The book is a portfolio of prints with a picture on one side and text on the other. But the prints aren't postcards. They're massive 40 x 30cm prints all loose, wrapped up in a grey cover which fits into a white slipcase.

Where the postcard bit does work is with the information. The first picture is of a piece of rough parkland with a picnic bench intruding in one corner and a security fence intruding in the background. Flick the page over and you learn that this is a picnic park in Melilla, a Spanish enclave in Morocco that has been in the news very recently (after this book was made). This is literally the front line for entry into Europe, the fence a barbed wire boundary to Europe.

The next picture shows the Melilla to Spain ferry crossing which Leitolf took fo 19.20 Euros, an option not available to the 14,714 migrants who are known to have drowned in the seas off the coasts of Spain between 1988 and 2007.

So a pattern emerges; there's a division between how Europe sees itself looking from the inside out and how Europe is seen by those seeking to get in. Postcards from Europe then is a book to do with Europe and migration, but why not extend the symbolism somewhat ; it's about wealth and non-wealth, about power and impotence about justice and injustice.

It's also about how there might not be such a thing as a Promised Land. We see a village in Spain where  immigrants were chased through the streets after a local was murdered, we see the hiding places in Eastern Europe where people smugglers hide migrants, the godforsaken refugee 'hostels' where asylum seekers are confined as they wait to be processed.

There's a watchtower in Hungary where the local hunters work with the authorities, where 'certain areas are completely covered by hunters' night scopes during the hunting season.' A watchtower is just a watchtower but it comes with chilling connotations which reverberate through both the image and the accompanying statement.

The economics of migration, farming and falling crop prices are examined, as are the problems that exist for asylum seekers who are landed in Italy ( perhaps the worst thing that can happen to an asylum seeker who has already landed in Lampedusa!). There's a park in Greece where migrants slept and were attacked by local 'vigilante' groups that were possibly connected to the country's neo-fascist Golden Dawn party.

Leitolf also looks at the people who are challenging this view of Europe. There's a campsite on Lesbos where hundreds of activists discussed 'Facets of the Border Regime'  and a picture of a beach where bodies of drowned migrants have washed up, and where the impact of the deaths on some local residents led to the foundation of the Borderline Sicilia organisation.

I thought Postcards from Europe was too big at first but I've changed my mind. The sentiment of this Fortress Europe runs from the captions to the picture and back again. The pictures have that sense of empty space liminality, but never fall into that boring picture category; they are energised by the information and tie together under the border theme. It's Europe as a boxed in geographical area that shuts outsiders out and keeps insiders in.

I've seen Postcards online, and it looks very worthy; lots of hard work and some not especially interesting pictures. But the book from brings it alive. It's a completely different kettle of fish where the text/picture/scale/layout all comes together.

The book has rather slipped under the radar in comparison to the project and exhibition that preceded it. Perhaps that's because the theme is very sober, or because the book is kind of pricey ( it's £40 in our English money) or because it hasn't been promoted very well. Or possibly a combination of all of the above.

I'm interested in the subject so for me, it's not at all dry. In fact it's one of the best books (if not the best) I've seen for energising and giving meaning to empty landscapes, something a lot of people try and fail, very miserably, to do. And the price? Well it is expensive, but it's beautifully made. And it cares. And it's worth it.

You can buy the book here.

Slan Abhaile Bill Kelly

Bill Kelly (on right) in 1965. Bill Kelly, below in 2013 photographed by Tadhg Devlin. This is what he told Tadhg when asked if he could photograph him on New Brighton Beach.

 "I live in Wirral so New Brighton would be fine and appropriate for as a young person I stood on that beach watching the ferries sail to Ireland and bitterly wishing I was on one."

Bill Kelly by Tadhg Devlin. He returns to Ireland today! Bon Voyage, Bill.

I love the way things come round full circle. Several years ago, I posted something on Myra Hindley and the famous mugshot of her. A few weeks later, a message from the daughter of the photographer came into my inbox which resulted in this post.

In July, I posted something about Keith Medley's Doubletake. A few weeks later I got a message from Bill Kelly, one of the people featured in the exhibition. This is what it said...

One of my nephew's visited the exhibition at the Walker and was amazed to recognise myself and my   brother Danny. The picture was taken mid 1965. I was twelve and he was thirteen and a half. He is the one with the watch. We had arrived in England from Ireland some years earlier. We were due to go on a trip to Lourdes in France and my mother applied for and was refused two British passports for us.

Sir Fredrick Woolf who was organising the trip met with us in London and took  us to the Irish embassy where the Ambassador issued a joint passport for us both. We traveled to France the next day.

Sir Fredrick kept the passport and we never saw it again. I am amazed to see these pictures!

I passed on his details to Tadhg Devlin who is photographing Irish migrants to Liverpool for his project 12 Miles Out and lives within a few miles of Bill's (soon-to-be-old) home in the Wirral. Tadgh took his portrait.

I aslo passed it on to Ken Grant who, along with Mark Durden, edited the excellent book that accompanies the exhibition.

The book is available for sale here (only £10)

And here is an interview with Bill Kelly that ran on the Miniclick blog.
 Here's an excerpt below. 

We had been to England twice on holiday before yet I still believed my sister when she told me during the boat trip that the houses in England were all painted white with red window  frames and English people ate children. We arrived at Woodside and watched the cattle being unloaded before the boat crossed to Liverpool to let us off and then we crossed the Mersey again to Wallasey by ferry. We stayed with an aunt and uncle who gave us Weetabix for breakfast. We had never seen this before and thought it was cardboard and that no matter how bad things were in Ireland, post-war England must be worst if they had to feed children on cardboard.

Cutting Open Ben Krewinkel's Possible Life

I finally cut open Ben Krewinkel's A Possible Life: Conversations with Gualbert, a book in which the pages are folded over so one side of the story is visible (the documenation of Gualbert's life) and the other is invisible - unless you cut the pages open . I did it in a seminar at Newport with a bunch of lovely documentary photography students. First I cut, and I butchered a couple of pages, then another student took over, and he butchered the book as well. Then someone suggested I use a decent letter-opener rather than a Stanley knife. So I took the book home and butchered it some more with a letter opener.

Even without opening the book, the general opinion was "I want one of those" with one dissenting "Anyone can do that."

So I took the book home and finished the job there. As with David Alan Harvey's Based on a True Story, there is a truly interactive element to Krewinkel's work, an element of theatre, of investigating and probing into something that lies hidden. The pictures don't matter in some ways. But as you cut, you see them, slowly revealing a different world to the life of Gualbert, the man depicted in the book. It's not an especially cheery world; it's rather lonely and isolated. Gualbert seems out of sorts in the picture, neither here nor there, a depressed character caught in a nightmare where people think he's something he's not. His family think he's something he's not, the Dutch government think he's something he's not, the people around him think he's something he's not.

Anyway, the book, which I think is wonderful, got me thinking about stories and books about refugees and migration, more of which later.

Read my review of the book for Photo-Eye here.