entangled – footprints of europe

Look closely enough at a map of Europe and the clean border lines begin to unravel.

Scattered across Europe are eight clusters of territories that the neat logic of the nation-state never resolved: enclaves — small pieces of one country swallowed whole by another; sovereign islands adrift in a foreign sea. But these aren’t cartographic errors. They are curious remnants of history — imprints and traces from treaties and inheritances that have remained in place.

I began this project in the aftermath of my own country’s decision for greater political separation from its neighbours — searching, perhaps, for evidence that entanglement between nations need not be a problem to be solved.

What I found was something quietly radical: people who have simply decided to ‘get on with it’. In every enclave I encountered a pragmatic genius for coexistence — a boundary running through a restaurant floor, a family paying taxes in proportion to the floor area in each country they span, a council chamber straddling two nations. Through generations of necessity, these people have developed an instinctive fluency in working through ambiguity.

Entangled is my attempt to photograph what sovereignty looks like when border lines have been worn smooth by ordinary life.

We live in an era of rebuilding walls. These enclaves suggest a different possibility. They are Europe’s footprints. I believe they are also its most honest self-portrait.