.jpg)
Open call and welcome!
​
MIGRANTS: what does migration mean to you?
​
Photography Postcard Art Project: Send a photograph of your choice (print a photo, postcard size) answering the question: What does migration mean to you?
​
The word Migrants, is too generic right? It creates a defined division: We are the Migrants, you are the Natives. I want to show this in the exhibition, how we individually, without entering in this division, interpret the word Migrant and what it means to us, asking the question: What does migration mean to you?
​
If you would like to participate in this coming exhibit, follow these simple steps:
​
1. Print a photo A5
2. Write a text, word, poem, story, answering the question; What does migration mean to you?
3. Post it to: Ideas without borders, Flat 2. 24A Highbury grove. London N5 2EA, UK
​
The event is a collaborative and participatory art project and the postcards will be part of an exhibition that will be held in London, just before March, 2019.
​
I am looking forward to receiving all the mail!
Many thanks
Kind regards
​​
Little acts of subversion
​
Ideas without borders,
After a long walk by the estuary river, after passing the mountains of small cages used to fish crabs and are sitting by the fisherman houses, we arrived to Caminha.
​
Caminha is a medieval and quiet Portuguese town close to the border of Spain, you can access it by ferry or a bridge, easily as there are not borders.
​
While we were walking the streets covered by stones admiring the mosaic and tiles on the façade of the houses, we spotted and stopped at a Photography shop. We wanted to print some photographs from this trip, travelling across Spain and Portugal, from Portsmouth to Sagres and back again. We wanted to send the photographs as personalised postcards, transporting our ideas freely without borders.
​
Our process printing the images was confronted by a computer screen that did not receive the photographs other way than via blue tooth, was unexpected as we have never used bluetooth to send files, the USB entry did not work, either the email connection. This was a Fujifilm computer, which seemed to be already obsolete.
​
The lady running the shop came to check how we were doing; speaking in Portuguese she complained that she had three computers and a printer, always facing some problem with technology. She also made the remark that technology is replacing people.
​
After successfully sending the photo files, the images migrated from the mobile phones to the computer via blue tooth, she manually edited and forwarded the files to her printer. I noticed that her fingers were very agile; when I asked her in Spanish how long she has worked developing photos. She replied in Portuguese that she has worked in the photography industry since 1963, starting in Lisbon, where she was born. After going to school only for four years and working doing different jobs, at the age of fourteen years old was admitted to do an apprenticeship at a popular printing studio. She explained that her job was to print black and white photographs onto different papers depending on the quality of the negative. In this studio there were eight people; men and women printing 1.200 photographs a day, she also explained enthusiastically the processes of printing used at that time.
​
In 1982 she moved from Lisbon to Caminha where she opened her shop. I asked her if today she develops films, she replies that only a few rolls a year, around 12 photo roll. She emphasized that it is a small town so her business is small. Explaining that today she doesn’t make enough money to sustain herself from the business and that although she is retired, she doesn’t want to stay at home, she loves working in her shop. After our conversation, I introduced myself and asked her name, she replied Alice- like Alice in Wonderland. This made me smile as the name suited her well, Alice is wonderful.
​
by Zia Fernandez ibarreche
