Gandras: Land of the White Stork

Title: Gandras: Land of the White Stork
Original title: Gandras: Land of the White Stork
Author: Jasper Bastian
ISBN: 978-1-7362345-1-8
Publisher: Charcoal Press
Limited edition: 1,000 copies

Gandras: Land of the White Stork is a photographic series by Jasper Bastian. On Lithuania’s southern border, the boundary plunges into neighboring Belarus in the shape of a teardrop before curving back up again. Its course follows no apparent geographical or political logic. Legend attributes the anomaly to Stalin, who is said to have set his pipe down on the new border while redrawing the map of Europe. Not wishing to disturb the leader, the cartographers simply drew around it and carried on working—and so the border was born. Whatever the official explanation, this absurd line inadvertently determined the fate of the Lithuanians living within the corridor.

Bastian: “I became interested in the region’s repeated changes of sovereignty and the shifting borders of the past hundred years. Its oldest residents have lived under Polish, German, Soviet, and Lithuanian rule.”

Bastian: “I wanted to examine the territorial transition between Lithuania and Belarus twenty-five years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. I initially focused the project on the Lithuanian side, fascinated by the ethnic diversity of these territories.”

Before the Soviet Union collapsed, residents could cross the boundary freely. They married, exchanged goods and services, and received equal treatment from the seat of power in Moscow. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the establishment of the European frontier, a militarized border enclosed the corridor, cutting residents off both from their cultural heritage and from the rest of modern Lithuania. Now only the white storks—the national bird of both countries—can cross freely.

Bastian’s photographs show the border fence running through front yards and splitting farmers’ fields in two. In one image, corrugated metal cuts straight through a cemetery.

After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and the European frontier was established in 2004, many villages were divided, among them Sakaline on the Lithuanian side and Kurkishki on the Belarusian side. During the Cold War, however, the two communities had been joined. Their residents grew up, married, and worked together. No one cared about the border; it was only a line on a map.

Amid the pastoral landscape, border markers appear conspicuously in the forest, then again on opposite banks of a quiet stream.

Crossing the border has become increasingly complicated. Residents need visas and must travel long distances to reach the other side. Strict border controls even prevent them from speaking to one another through the fence.

Development in the region is virtually nonexistent. Residents live by foraging and by maintaining forms of subsistence farming that have remained unchanged for a century. Household appliances, farm machinery, vehicles, and roads all seem suspended in time.

Most of those who remain in the towns along Lithuania’s border are now isolated and forgotten.

Most remember the former open border and the Soviet collective as the “good old days.”

The elderly still carefully preserve their traditions, even as they contend with changing social and economic conditions.

Bastian made these photographs on film with a medium-format camera. He prefers to work slowly and believes that shooting film has a “slowing-down” effect. This can be felt in the series’ contemplative portraits and landscapes, whose seasonal colors and format invite reflection. His gaze is calm, sincere, and unhurried. The people in his portraits retain their dignity, their stories bound to the land.

Stanislav, 62, lives with his dog in the last house before the border in Norviliskes. His aunt Yanina lives just 400 meters away on the other side. Yet visiting her in Pizkuny requires a round trip of nearly 150 kilometers. The Norviliskes border crossing opens only at Easter, on November 1, and at Christmas. On those days he can cross directly, but only after obtaining a very expensive visa.

A portrait of a woman sitting alone on her bed tells the story of someone separated from her loved ones by the border, never to see them again.

The residents’ once-harmonious lives were disrupted, and many families were torn apart. Wives, siblings, and close friends now inhabit different worlds, though their homes may be only meters apart. This photograph from 1992 shows Ona and Terese’s cousins from the nearby village of Kanbaliskes. It was the last time the sisters ever saw them.

Bastian’s photographs portray a place forgotten by modern Europe, one that seems to have no connection with Lithuania at all. Yet beneath the boundaries imposed by cartographers, the realities of nature and life persist.

These villages are isolated from the rest of Lithuania and cut off from the amenities of its towns and cities. This frozen pond, for example, lies in the small Lithuanian village of Sakaline, one of the many “ghost villages” along Europe’s border. Their populations are predominantly elderly.

Gandras is the Lithuanian word for “white stork,” and this border region has Europe’s highest concentration of the birds. Like the winding rivers and the wind in Bastian’s photographs, they remain unbound by the borders imposed upon the land. Gandras opens in late autumn and follows the seasons through to summer, as nature continues its rhythms undisturbed.

Every summer, Viktor returns to his native Jakubiskes to care for his parents’ house. He has fond memories of his childhood there, when the village had a large community of young people and celebrations were frequent. The transition to a market economy brought rising unemployment and nostalgia for the former government and economic system. Before the Soviet Union collapsed, people from both countries worked in the same collective. Today the collective lies in Belarus, while the Lithuanian village is in decline. Most young people have moved to Vilnius or other European countries in search of work. Lithuania has one of Europe’s highest emigration rates.

Children’s games and the religious images in elderly residents’ homes express a faith that reaches beyond the present, carrying the hope of renewal.

Before long, winter’s gray will give way to summer green, and the white storks will return to the fields and streams on both sides of the border.

In Gandras, what is timeless remains unchanged.

Note: The images are reproduced from the photobook and remain copyright of their original creator.

Gandras: Land of the White Stork

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