Overview

A seemingly ordinary landscape becomes a life-changing threshold for thousands. Crossing by documentary photographer Ruth Kaplan is a long-term photographic project focused on Roxham Road, an irregular border site between New York State, USA and Quebec, Canada. Although not an official port of entry, the site became a passageway for people seeking asylum in Canada. During Donald Trump's first presidency, increasingly restrictive U.S. immigration policies led a growing number of asylum seekers to cross into Canada via Roxham Road. While controversial, the site functioned for five years as a largely safe and operational crossing, until its closure in 2023. Between 2018 and 2023, Kaplan documented Roxham Road and the many lives shaped by its existence. The resulting images trace a dense network of intersecting forces: migration and infrastructure, authority and care, geography, time, uncertainty, and endurance. Rather than isolating moments of crisis, Kaplan builds a layered visual record of a place defined by transition and tension, revealing how global political decisions materialise within a small, seemingly unremarkable landscape. At a time when displacement and border politics continue to shape lives worldwide, the book offers a grounded and attentive perspective on migration--one that resists simplification and is rooted in observation, duration, and presence. Readers are invited to reflect on borders not only as lines on a map, but as lived spaces.

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9783969002254

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Ruth Kaplan is a documentary-based photographer whose work explores a variety of themes such as the social behaviour of bathers in communal hot springs and bathhouses, participants in rituals of spirituality and the transient status surrounding refugees seeking asylum in Canada. In addition to an extensive background in editorial photography, Kaplan has exhibited internationally with work in major Canadian and international collections and publications. She is a recipient of numerous grants and awards and currently teaches at OCAD University and Toronto Metropolitan University.

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