Europe’s new edge: Poland’s east

“East face”: This is how the Polish call their 1230 km long border which separates their country from Russia, Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine, stretching from the Baltic to the Carpathians. It's hard to believe that people in Europe could live more secluded as they do in this region, which is in many respects characterized by the near border marking the frontier of the European Union with its neighbors in the east. Jordis Antonia Schlösser has photographed the new border of the EU. She met unemployed workers, up starting people, poets and smugglers. One question was present all the time: What is home? Wherever she went, she could sense the memory of this region’s trauma in the 20. Century: the policy of turnouts and its victims among the Polish, Ukrainian, Belarusian and German population of this historically diverse and multiethnic region which finally became part of the European Union on May 1st 2004. Photographer Jordis Schlösser/OSTKREUZ had the chance to travel through this region. Her work on the life in eastern Poland was published first in GEO/September 2004.