Photography and borders: Nicosia’s green line as a milieux de memoire

Adil, Alev (2010) Photography and borders: Nicosia’s green line as a milieux de memoire. In: International Conference of Photography and Theory - Cypriot Photography in Context: Time Place and Identity, 25-26th November 2010, Cyprus University of Technology, Limassol, Cyprus. (Unpublished)

Abstract

This paper explores borders: the border that divides Nicosia, the border between memory and its object, between public and private reminiscence, between time and photography. I will explore photographic representations of Cyprus in the work of John Thomson in the 19th century and Jim Harold’s recent representations of the border zone in his exhibition Across a Fractured Land(scape) in relation to my use of photography and poetry as part of an autoethnographic series of dérives along the Green Line and my photographic essay. A Small Forgotten War (previously exhibited in London at the Stephen Lawrence Gallery in 2008 and the PM Gallery in 2009). My work considers the border that divides Nicosia, as both what Nora would term a lieux and a contested milieux de memoire (of war, of Cypriot identities), and in the process challenges professional and discursive boundaries between photography as evidential discourse and as autobiographical memory practice.

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