A Place Called Home

What does it mean to be home? Is it a place, or a state of being? Is it something we project out, or does it enter us: through lived experience, familial bonds, the path of aging, through the roots we plant in order to ground and grow, or is it just an existential thought? When is home just an idea - a talisman for the tales of our ancestry; a lighting rod searing through our memories? These questions guide my process in photographing the place where I grew up; a place I left behind before I came of age and never permanently returned, yet still shines with the warmth of a single word: HOME. It's a place I barely belong, yet still feels like the inside of myself inverted to the world, raw and rotting, laid bare in the blistering, dusty earth. A place where I am always welcome, but never quite embraced. A place that judges my eternal distance, my obvious differences, my dubious cosmopolitanism. A place where nobody knows me better, yet doesn’t quite see who I am. This series is simultaneously a documentary practice, a love letter to my birthplace and an intimate family album. It is A Place Called Home, but I enter as an outsider.