Immigrant Song - Quadriptychs

I lived in the United States for fifteen years. During that time away from my homeland, I felt uprooted.

What about others in similar circumstances? What do they leave behind? What challenges do they face when arriving in a new country? How do they experience life as immigrants?

These questions led me to create Immigrant Song, drawing on my 4stones project, in which I invite people to freely arrange four pebbles. I invited immigrants from my New York community to take part. The first portraits took the form of diptychs, pairing each participant's face with a photograph of their four-stone composition.

I later expanded the format into quadriptychs, each comprising a portrait, a cherished object brought from the participant's country, a composition of four pebbles and a handwritten reflection on their own experience.

Through these images, I want their voices to be heard and their pride to shine through. Their portraits bring together faces, memories, gestures and words, without reducing their identities to their status as immigrants.

I photograph the portraits with a Holga plastic lens. Its lack of sharpness helps visually convey the loss of identity that can accompany immigration.

To make the prints, I use an alternative photographic process to transfer the images onto watercolor paper. The transfer is unpredictable, much like immigration itself. As the image moves from one surface to another, it echoes the passage from one country and one life to another, sometimes producing unexpected results. Each print is unique.