INSIDE A BORDER
2022- ONGOING. PHOTOGRAPHS.
Inside a Border challenges the idea of borders, by examining the absence of one. Through exploring how a border manifests as a site of connection and division, the project questions what being connected means today, socially, spatially, politically and economically. The work documents the culturally diverse internal spaces that now sit atop what was once the world's most militarised border: Hadrian's Wall. The project focuses on a 12km stretch of the forgotten urban path of the Wall, through the centre of Newcastle Upon Tyne. Every photograph was a border crossing in itself, knocking on doors, declaring identity, explaining intentions and obtaining permission to cross over into private property to make the image. The photographs unify different spaces through bright flash and consistent, symmetrical composition, while cropping out windows, doors or people that would suggest a world outside the image's border walls. By making these places more anonymous, they come to have more in common with each other, occupying a spatially ambiguous no man's land: connected through both history and visual representation.