A house in Komisa

Personal project exploring emotional heritage of a family, in which a maternal house on an Adriatic island becomes a metaphysical archive of mixed feelings, holding tender memories alongside familiar pressure as house and landscape become intertwined

A House in Komiža is a personal photographic project exploring emotional heritage through the maternal family home in Komiža, on the island of Vis, Croatia. For generations, my family lived within a tightly structured social environment shaped by patriarchal norms and collective expectations that strongly influenced daily life, particularly the experiences of women.

My relationship with this legacy is ambivalent: part recalls tender childhood memories with grandparents on an Adriatic island, while another exerts an emotional pressure that continues to shape my sense of responsibility, belonging, and self-perception.

Despite living differently today, I recognize the feelings of guilt and duty that I try to resist, yet they persist as echoes of values transmitted across generations. The project emerges as a confrontation with these emotions during temporary stays in a place where societal expectations remain strongly present, both inside and outside its walls.

The family house functions as a physical and metaphysical archive of memory. Through the camera, I attempt to connect with the perspective of my ancestors within its walls in moments of solitude shaped by trauma, silence, restraint and fragments of their intimate histories.

The work develops through a heterogeneous photographic approach, where self-portraiture, landscape and nature photography juxtapose representation in shifting relations rather than fixed categories.

Created over three years of repeated visits, the photographs reflect shifting emotional states—closeness, tension, nostalgia, sorrow and confrontation with the past. Through fragments of the house that intertwines with surrounding landscapes, and traces of life within, the project gradually negotiates memory, female experience in a strong patriarchal community, and intergenerational traces, expressed through diverse emotional and photographic approaches.