Inside, Outside & In Between the Buffer Zone

Texts and photos by by Barbara Laborde.

After touring Cyprus for more than a year, the documentary project “Inside, Outside and in Between” returns to Nicosia for a closing and sale exhibition at the French Institute from April 19 to 28.

Light opening on April 19, 2016 from 6 to 8 pm.

Monday to Thursday: 8.30am to 6.30pm
Friday: 8.30 to 2.30

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180km-long and 7-km-wide, barely 4m of space in some places: the buffer zone has different faces; it is sometimes a mountain, a single lane, a succession of lands, villages or ruins. You follow it for a while and then you lose track of it. You face it or simply guess its presence behind military watchtowers. You are stopped by its barbed wire or you enter it without noticing. Depending on who and from where one looks at it, the buffer zone repels, fascinates, disturbs, intimidates or is totally ignored. It remains an itchy scar, no longer bloody, but still an open wound. So present. So elusive.

The line, as it is known, is not really a line. Two ceasefire lines delimit the buffer zone, with a different reality behind each of them and between them a territory where life continues. The UN troops are working there every day, Georgios and Osman cultivate their fields, Stelios visits the cemetery of his village, Elena opened a kindergarten while Mihalakis and his wife live there all year long! The buffer zone is 40-years-old, but only a few insiders really know it. And this for an obvious reason: without the permission and a serious UN escort, we are limited to get a glimpse of it and imagine it from outside.

Barbara Laborde is a French photojournalist based in Nicosia. She has followed the buffer zone for over a year, seeking to capture this territory and question its reality. The documentary work she presents, offers visitors a long journey within the buffer zone and along both its southern and northern sides, from west to east. A mosaic of stories and images, like so many opened windows on this hidden strip of territory, and some crucial ‘keys’ to better understand it.