Photographers explore Europe’s eastern border in Narva exhibition

An international photography exhibition exploring Europe’s eastern border as a historical, cultural, psychological and perceptual condition will open on Thursday at the gallery of the University of Tartu’s Narva College, ERR reports.

titled Unchanged at the Eastern Border, the exhibition presents work to date from an ongoing documentary photography project by Luca Berti, Anthony Haughey and Raphaël Gianelli-Meriano.

The artists examine both physical and invisible borders that persist in people, language, memory and emotions, as well as in the polarising division between “us” and “them”.

The project takes on particular significance in Narva, where the border is part of everyday urban and community life. Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine has also brought increased political and social attention to the eastern border of the Baltic states, the organisers said. The exhibition aims to create a space for dialogue and for different perspectives and experiences to meet.

Berti has documented Setomaa and the Setos, a South Estonian community with a distinct historical and regional identity. Although their daily lives are largely intertwined with Estonia’s national culture, they continue to consciously practise their own language and customs. His photography book Vana ja vahtsõnõ Setomaa, produced in cooperation with Setomaa museums, was published in 2026.

Gianelli-Meriano focuses on identities shaped by migration connected to Soviet industrialisation in Ida-Viru County. His visual research examines infrastructure and people left behind by the empire, as well as tensions in integration policy, where the Russian-speaking community is often perceived as an alternative collective identity.

Haughey’s idea for the project dates back to 1989, when he was a film student in Katowice during the fall of the Berlin Wall. Over the past 35 years, Europe has changed significantly: former Eastern Bloc countries have joined the European Union and NATO has expanded across the continent, reshaping political alliances, security narratives and fragile ties of collective identity. His research examines this changing landscape and asks how a troubled past continues to move through the present.

The exhibition will remain open at the University of Tartu’s Narva College gallery until December.