Photographers from many countries have long been interested in NATO's external borders, an interest which has grown in particular since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Unlike news reporters, however, artists have more time to explore the subject in depth and approach the concept of the border primarily in a psychological and emotional sense.

Photographer-artist Luca Berti, an Italian national, has been working in southeastern Estonia for several years, primarily photographing the people and landscapes of Setomaa.

Setomaa is a historical area which straddles Estonia's border with the Russian Federation, and with it the EU and NATO external frontier.

"For me, coming from Italy, this is of course a very special border. It is somehow exotic, but also dramatic and sad, especially in the case of Setomaa, which has been split in two," Berti said.

Berti said hopes that he will one day also be able to document the lives of Setos living on the other side of the border, to gain as complete a picture as possible of their lives and culture.

Meanwhile French photographer Raphaël Gianelli-Meriano has also spent years exploring the sense of the border, among the people and industrial heritage of Ida-Viru County. His photo project is titled "Ida-Virumaa hall tsoon" ("Ida-Virumaa Grey Zone), noting the ambiguous border region cannot be viewed just in black and white.

"What impressed me most was that people here are living their lives, and this expresses the beauty of humanity. In fact, they are not particularly interested in all the complex things that I see," Gianelli-Meriano said.

Estonian photographic artists find the outside perspective on the country's border regions intriguing too. "In the context of this exhibition, you have the outside perspective; mine, as an Estonian curator, and then the large Russian community here locally, all coming together. I think it is an incredibly fascinating combination," said exhibition curator Kaisa Eiche.

The exhibition "Idapiiril muutuseta" ("All Quiet on the Eastern Border") will remain open at the University of Tartu Narva College until December.

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