A pine forest with indicated path. Obliquely in the image of a white-red-white rod, and a little further back, a white stone with a red cap, that’s all. But the Unassuming, this recording by Valerio Vincenzo is deceptive. Until 40 years ago, plants were separated not only Austria and Czechoslovakia were impenetrable lock. The so-called Iron curtain divided Europe. On a other photo is a wooden path through the dunes to the beach. To the left is a black-and-red-Golden concrete pile, on the right, a Red-and-White: the German border on the island of Usedom. Here, too, stood up into the 90s this fence is a border. Today, Poland belongs to the European Union, the marker shows only the state ownership.

border Czech Republic – Austria.Photo: ValerioVINCENZO_hanslucas.com

In the atrium of the Federal foreign office more than 20 large-format square photos of border situations in Europe, a good place for this exhibition. They show “a utopia that has become reality,” as Valerio Vincenzo in the accompanying book “Borderline. Frontiers of Peace. Les Frontières de la Paix“ writes. As the Italians wanted to work after a period of study in France in 1995, there are still a few months, he had to fill out lot of forms. Only a little later, after he had worn all the papers together, melted “this is an enormous administrative machinery,” like snow in the sun of Italy had become part of the Schengen area.

On the border between Germany and France: the castle of Fleckenstein 2007, France .Photo: ValerioVINCENZO_hanslucas.com

Nothing New, you could say to Stefan Zweig: “Before 1914 the earth had belonged to all people. Everyone went where he wanted and stayed as long as he wanted. There was no permit, no concealed attungen, and I revel in the Amazement of young people when I tell them that I traveled before 1914, to India and America without a passport or have ever seen,” he wrote in 1944 in “The world of Yesterday: memories of a European”.

The border between Poland and Slovakia today.Photo: ValerioVINCENZO_hanslucas.com

We have forgotten this. With the First world war, it was over with the freedom of travel, mistrust and demarcation of catchment in Europe and, at the latest, after the Second world war held with the division of the continent, borders were insurmountable. Before 1914, industry, boundaries were “nothing more than symbolic lines, the people were equally careless as to the Meridian in Greenwich”. With the establishment of the Schengen area in Europe, initially, to a large extent. 26 countries, 420 million inhabitants, four million square meters, are so connected to each other.

for Ten years, Vincenzo has travelled across Europe to photograph the peaceful become borders, or what is left of it. Almost 20 000 km he returned to find the appropriate points. Between Switzerland and France are, for example, rods on a snow-covered summit, to highlight a line, it might as well be a Trail in the snow chaos. Between Latvia and Estonia, it is an ancient-looking flat stone wall on which a family goes through the fields. Funny, the photo with the two cyclists, the kiss on the three-country point between the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany across the border and take a Selfie.

Selfie at the three countries point of Germany-Belgium-Netherlands.Photo: ValerioVINCENZO_hanslucas.com

Yes, it is a reality that has become a utopia that has captured Vincenzo in his photos. You, it is not as a matter of course. You want to be defended, even in the European elections. The example of Stefan Zweig shows how quickly the Situation can change.
foreign office, the atrium, to 26. May. Mo-Fr 10-19 o’clock. Accompanying the book is 40 €.