In Postcards from Europe, Eva Leitolf examines how European societies relate to the European Union’s external borders and the associated internal conflicts.

Designed as a long-term, open-ended search for photographic evidence, the archive focuses not on the suffering of undocumented migrants, which has already been widely documented, but on the structures and procedures with which European states respond to, process and administer migration, and on the measures instituted to control the Union’s external borders.

Combining documentary and conceptual strategies, the artist explores the tension between what can be seen and what is left to the imagination, testing the possibilities and limits of visual representation. 

Since 2006, the project has taken Eva Leitolf to Spain and the Spanish exclaves of Melilla and Ceuta in Morocco, to the Hungarian border with Ukraine, to the Channel ports of Calais and Dover, to Italy and to Greece. The project is ongoing.

—LensCulture

Postcards from Europe 03/13: Work From the Ongoing Archive by Eva Leitolf
Publisher: Kehrer Verlag
Slipcase with 20 archive plates