‘ONE STEP BEYOND -- THE MINE REVISITED’ EXHIBITION OPENS AT HEADQUARTERS ON 7 NOVEMBER

Note to Correspondents

‘ONE STEP BEYOND -- THE MINE REVISITED’ EXHIBITION OPENS

AT HEADQUARTERS ON 7 NOVEMBER

The United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) and the Goethe-Institut New York, in collaboration with Medico International, present an exhibition entitled “One Step Beyond -- The Mine Revisited”, which opens on Monday, 7 November at 5 p.m. in the South Gallery of the General Assembly Visitors’ Lobby.

One Step Beyond is a photo-documentary project by Lukas Einsele in cooperation with Andreas Zierhut.  It focuses on the visible and obvious relationship between landmines and landmine survivors.  Through the individual accounts of landmine survivors, the grim realities of the landmine crisis are exposed.  Based on landmine survivors’ drawings of the places where their accidents occurred, the project encompasses the horrific experience uniting all survivors.  Five out of the 47 survivors interviewed for this project are represented in the exhibition.

Based on the detailed descriptions provided by the landmine survivors, as well as military and minefield maps and information made available by deminers, Einsele began researching the landmines that may have been responsible for the accidents portrayed in this exhibition.  The interviews, photographs and additional research were done in the most extensively mined countries in the world:  Afghanistan, Angola, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Cambodia.  Also documented in the exhibit are other themes relevant to landmines including mine clearance, mine education and rehabilitation projects.

The exhibition and accompanying book are dedicated to those survivors who told their stories for One Step Beyond and allowed their photographs to be taken.  The photographs speak not only for the survivors portrayed but also as for all those nameless individuals who have gone through similar experiences.  By recounting what they have endured, these landmine survivors help to make the atrocity of this phenomenon comprehensible.

For more information on this exhibit, visit the website:  www.one-step-beyond.de.  For more information on United Nations exhibitions, call Jan Arnesen, tel.:  (212) 963-8531; or Liza Wichmann, tel.:  (212) 963-0089, or visit the website at www.un.org/events/UNART.

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