From There to There

In this project, I am interested in the themes of displacement, lack of belonging, and home in an existential, non-literal sense. I'm creating a story about a search for idealized home, ideas of stability and connection in an ever-changing environment.

Since I've left my home country because of war and political situation, I started to think about all the people who left their homes for different reasons and my own choice to move away. I asked myself what the word “home” actually meant to me. I realized something important: I had never truly felt “at home” anywhere.

Working with themes of displacement and lack of belonging, it’s easy to fall into nostalgia. My project explicitly rejects this. I do not feel, and am not interested in, nostalgia and homesickness. Instead, this body of work explores “home” as an existential, almost utopian idea. It questions the internal relationship between identity, memory, community, and isolation. This led to the central question that drives the project: how does one find something that is completely unknown to them? If “home” is not a building, but a feeling of connection between yourself and the world, how do I search for a feeling I have no reference for?

There is no single, simple answer to that question. My project started with the physical act of leaving my country, but it quickly turned into an internal journey. It is about the home we remember, the home we imagine, and the reality we live in.

Engaging with spaces and subjects of my current location, I explore notions of home and their connections to the land, memory and community.

Ultimately, I am interested in the complex emotional responses that my photographs create: alienation, melancholy, and hope. I want to believe that my photos in this project reflect the more common human experience - the search for meaning, identity, and a place to belong in a world that doesn’t always seem to care.