A Reasonable Degree of Likelihood
Immigration law is commonly regarded as one of the most complex areas of law in the UK. The bureaucratic system that administers these laws remains hidden and inaccessible to most. It is Kafkaesque in its unending demands. Photography within legal environments is used to hold evidence firmly in reality. In a post truth environment photography has become part of a system that relies on evidence that can neither be confirmed or denied. The law and the photograph act as frameworks for negotiating evidence, belief and knowledge. Both play a role in upholding ideologies that dehumanise and antagonise.
The objective of the lawyers who act for those claiming asylum, is to represent a series of truthful events to the Home Office based on client’s accounts. When a lawyer mediates between this and the state’s demands a third reality is created. Each (client, state, lawyer) has a role to play in the absurd drama. The intentionally dysfunctional, bureaucracy demands they act out their parts in a performance.
In A Reasonable Degree of Likelihood, a lawyer and actors perform for the system, against the system and as the system whilst documents of the legal process are deconstructed to show the chaos of the bureaucracy. Hotels where asylum seekers could/have been accommodated provides the stage. Reality and fiction becoming fused in
a performance that is tested. By challenging truth in the photograph, the fiction of border regimes is visualised.
Hatch Advice Buearu (9mins)
filmed and edited by Siôn Marshall-Waters
Last Updated 10.06.26