Homesick

You can take a person out of their homeland but you can't take the homeland out of the person. In my work "Homesick" I look into the emotional integration processes of twelve female migrants from diverse backgrounds, focusing on their relationship to both their country of origin and their new homeland. I'm looking for ways to uncover and explore the hidden psychological landscapes generated by the friction between the migrants' old and new identities as they make the transition from one way of living to another. My working methodology fell into two distinct stages: 1.Photographing the participant’s old home. I made contact with the participant’s family who still lived back in the participant’s childhood home and visited them on my own. I then selected and photographed an interior wall within the home. On my return to Berlin I made a large scale 1:1 (life size) print of the wall photograph and hung it like wallpaper in my studio. 2. Photographing the participant. I invited the participant to my studio and photographed her in front of the huge two- dimensional photograph of their former home, using lighting conditions sympathetic to the background image. While shooting the portrait, I observe their body language and facial expressions, searching for a central point between the migrant's past and present. I hope to get closer to the person's soul, to peel back the layers of identity. The finished photograph is the result of a process of flattening, both metaphorical and actual. First I flatten their past and memories by selecting one image to represent all they left behind. Secondly, by photographing them in front of the two dimensional wallpaper, I flatten the migrant into their past. The illusion is almost sealed and complete but small clues reveal that all is not what it appears to be and the visual dissonance is slowly apparent. Homesick explores transnational mobility by playing games with time perspectives that emphasise the complex psychological issues and conflicts surrounding migration.