Divided Seas, Parallel Lives

This photo essay examines the sea as a divided space and as marked by the existence of parallel lives. Images taken in 2015 during fieldwork on the small Mediterranean island of Lampedusa are used to examine the ways in which these divisions are experienced, questioned, and problematized both by inhabitants of and visitors to the island. Lampedusa emerges here as a site of contested memorials and hospitalities, where lost lives are, at best, imperfectly recovered. The essay shows how a series of familiar gendered dynamics play into this division of places and lives, yet in multiple, fragmented, and contested ways.