The Iron Curtain, 1987 (4×5 film)

As many of you already know, I recently published The Lost Border, the Landscape of the Iron Curtain, and most of the pictures from the book are also available on the Lost Border website. It is a project I began in 1985 when walls and fences traversed Europe dividing East and West. Subsequently, the Berlin Wall opened in 1989, Communism fell, and Germany reunified. The healing is incomplete, but it is ongoing, and in response to that I have continued to photograph the rebuilding of Berlin up to the present.

Today, the U.S. Senate voted to extend the barrier along the Mexican border an additional 500 miles. I do not pretend to have a solution to the illegal immigration problem, but I do know first hand the ugliness of walls, and that ultimately they fail to deter those who seek freedom. I also believe that such barriers become the recognizable face of countries–East Germany then, Israel and the U.S. today. These images are inevitably hard, if not brutal. It does not matter whether the walls are intended to keep people in or out. They are a futile response to conflicts that remain tragically unresolved. The construction of more walls and fences along the Mexican border is a sign of defeat.