Images helped me to retrace my steps and to connect the dots, to map out and understand the journey of my family through time and generations, and to communicate that to others. In doing so, I found out that in a family shaped by migration there is no such a thing as those who left and those who stayed. 

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I would argue that the words emigrant and immigrant might be a residue of colonising thinking, which necessitates a fixed point of reference to call home and for certain members to stay behind.

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I see my family as an elastic, non-hierarchical web of relationships, whose members developed situated knowledges which can be temporarily anchored to place and also to movement. 

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The photographic image can offer a space where the diaspora can meet, and explore new ways of cognising. A place where experiences can be shared and where the multilayered identity of the migrant can become people’s own regenerative forces.

 

This body of work was presented at CRASSH University of Cambridge for the conference Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, February 2022.