Heimat / Home (WIP)

This series started out as my version of the 20th-century family photograph, inspired by Thomas Struth’s family portraits. Over the years, it has turned into a project about family and by extension the family home.

Heimat (Home) | Photographic Series | 2020 - ongoing

In 2019, I left my hometown Cologne (Germany) to live in Brisbane (Australia). I started building a new home for myself in this hitherto unfamiliar place. A year in, I began taking portraits of my newfound friends and family. With my analog large-format camera, I created my version of the 20th-century family photograph, inspired by Thomas Struth’s family portraits. Over the years, the Heimat project has turned into a project about family and by extension the family home. 

Family is the smallest societal unit and the integral building block on which wider society is built. Our family defines us, even in their absence. In 2021, my first child was born and my understanding of what family is drastically changed. Suddenly, I was no longer just a daughter, sister, aunt or cousin. I was now a parent and creator of my own family.

My life since revolves primarily around the family home. Next to continuing my portrait series, I began documenting my own family life. These images are an intimate and honest insight into the messy chaos, exhaustion and intense beauty of raising little children. They sit in juxtaposition to the staged family portraits. Where the portraits take an outsider's perspective, these photographs are looking in.

Working with a large format camera requires concentration and patience, both on my part and that of the portrayed. Possibly due to the awkwardness of the process, the resulting images reveal a certain vulnerability. The portraits represent a public image of each family, whilst also revealing the fragility of our own self-image. 

The topic of family is a common thread in my body of work. In the past, I have made work about my relationship with my father. I have created a photographic interpretation of the greatest family novel ever written, Anna Karenina. And I have observed the strength people can draw from their families in times of crisis when I made a documentary film with refugee women.

As with all of my work, I am looking to find ways to visually translate what connects us all on a deeper level, despite our differences.