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.
