FOTODOKS
Festival for contemporary
documentary photography
FOTODOKS
Festival for contemporary documentary photography

Arash Fayez

Apolis, 2021

‘You’re not illegal, but you’re not legal either.’ This statement from Arash Fayez’s immigration lawyer – which came right after his voluntary departure from the United States in 2017 – is what gave him the idea for his work Apolis. At a time when border policies are getting ever stricter, his work can be interpreted as an essayistic autobiography in which private photographs taken with the smartphone are layered and overlaid with legal documents, including visa applications from Fayez’s immigration file. The juxtaposition appearing in the collage brings two different modes of representation – based on self-ascription and ascription by others – into dialogue with one another: on the one hand, the seemingly endless bureaucracy related to migration, which to date has refused to grant Fayez a legal status in the United States, and, on the other, everyday photographs, which, like a pictorial diary, shed light on shadowy immigration policies in the United States and the state of being they induce, a limbo of waiting imposed by others.

 

Arash Fayez

Apolis, 2021

‘You’re not illegal, but you’re not legal either.’ This statement from Arash Fayez’s immigration lawyer – which came right after his voluntary departure from the United States in 2017 – is what gave him the idea for his work Apolis. At a time when border policies are getting ever stricter, his work can be interpreted as an essayistic autobiography in which private photographs taken with the smartphone are layered and overlaid with legal documents, including visa applications from Fayez’s immigration file. The juxtaposition appearing in the collage brings two different modes of representation – based on self-ascription and ascription by others – into dialogue with one another: on the one hand, the seemingly endless bureaucracy related to migration, which to date has refused to grant Fayez a legal status in the United States, and, on the other, everyday photographs, which, like a pictorial diary, shed light on shadowy immigration policies in the United States and the state of being they induce, a limbo of waiting imposed by others.