BORDER is a journey along Russia’s border, the longest national border of the world, undertaken between 2011 and the end of 2015. It spans over 60,000 km and shares land borders with Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, and North Korea. Japan and USA, both sharing sea borders with Russia and are just a short sea trip away. In the south, Russia also borders with Abkhazia.

Maria Gruzdeva united all these different geographical locations under one comprehensive study of the Russian border. A complicated Soviet past coupled with the vast geography of Russia has made border territories a problematic area. Gruzdeva’s meticulous study of the borderline landscape provides us with depictions of monumental symbols and iconography, thus presenting evidence of how history is manifested in these landscapes.

While working on the series, Gruzdeva kept travel diaries, which became an important part of the project. Systematically, Gruzdeva started filling them with stories told by people she met, her own thoughts on things she encountered on the way, and her own experiences of being at the border. These travel journals became a rich mix of facts, maps, stories, photos and collages.