Nicosia, Europe’s last divided capital

Nicosia October 2019. I spent my time zig-zagging along Nicosia’s green line, in & out of the European Union through checkpoints dividing Greek & Turkish areas. There’s an unsettling sense of abandon. However, there’s a certain degree of hope that sometime soon, a reunited Cyprus will perhaps rise from the ashes.

In my photographic wanderings, I discovered an unexpected variety of cultures & languages (Greek, Turkish, English, Arabic, Russian, Tagalog, Tamil, Sinhala, Vietnamese …) yet I kept running into cemented walls, oil-barrel barricades and dead-ends. Although it’s easier to cross from one side to the other, there’s no escaping the fact that the island is divided.

How long can this go on?

Nicosia is the place not only to reflect upon the Cyprus issue but to contemplate the emergence of other walls worldwide.

In my selection, I purposely chose not to add captions labelling photos as having been taken either on the Greek or Turkish side