In Mexico, thousands of people are disappearing on their way to the US. Their relatives embark on a relentless search to find them. On the Italian island of Lampedusa, tourists encounter hundreds of migrants. In Ukraine, people keep fighting for sovereignty; a fight that extends to borders that traverse the middle of society.
Photographer Helena Lea Manhartsberger, originally from Innsbruck, addresses global inequalities in three completely different regions. Her work sheds light on the brutality of existing structures of power and institutionalised racism; but also solidarity, hope and resistance of civil players. Manhartsberger tells the stories of individuals, without losing sight of the big picture.
She set up this exhibition for Journalismusfest Innsbruck and points out the complexity of the subject by repeatedly bursting classic pictoral worlds and narrative forms of daily news coverage. Doing so, she makes room for a state that is “in between”.
Exhibition opening with guided tour in the inner courtyard of the Faculty of Catholic Theology, afterwards in the Cultural Bakehouse Bäckerei. Conversation as part of the opening.
Into the Unknown
Report of an Investigation
In autumn 2023, Author Nora Belghaus and photographer Helena Lea Manhartsberger spent 5 months travelling through Mexico and Arizona. They wanted to understand the reasons why people from Mexico and Central America decide to travel thousands of kilometres, by foot, by bus, or on top of a train in order to reach the US-Mexico border – accepting deadly risks when crossing it. They followed the tracks of a missing young migrant who disappeared in the Sonoran Desert, in the border area of Arizona in 2020. On their journey, they even reach the autopsy room of a US forensic doctor containing the remains of hundreds of missing migrants who cannot be identified due to a lack of money. The author and the photographer will also tell the stories of the people they met on their way and their tragic fate, for which no country wants to be responsible.
Helena Lea Manhartsberger
Photographer, Selbstlaut Kollektiv, Vienna
Nora Belghaus
Editor of German daily newspaper taz. Die tageszeitung, Berlin
Hosted by
Barbara Bachmann
Freelance reporter, South Tyrol, e.g. for Reportagen, mare, Süddeutsche-Magazin
