Description

From the publisher: THE FENCE confronts both physical and mental boundaries. Through Erikson’s black-and-white topographical panoramic photographs of a 72 km long fence, we follow the border of Denmark and Germany, from the Baltic Sea to the North Sea. The purpose of the fence, built by the Danish state in 2019, is to exterminate the wild boar in Denmark and to stop the aggressive African swine fever. Today wild boars are extinct in Denmark. In its strictly documentary form, Erikson’s photographs allure the viewer with subtle visual qualities that is beyond and in front of the fence’s physical presence. This, in combination with the graphic form of the book, also portrays the fence very idea of separation. Jesper Olsson writes in the book’s closing essay: ” If culture and world making begins with distinction, with the insertion of differences – between elements, entities, regions – the well-known cosmogonic myths suggest as much – then the techniques of building corrals, fences, and folds belong to the constitutional operations. They have been pivotal not only in separating man from animal and culture from nature, but also in materializing power and geopolitical demarcation lines. The fence is, presumably, one of most versatile and violent inventions and metaphors in history. In a way integral to history as such”