I started Immigrant Song with diptychs including the portrait of an immigrant and a still life of the arrangement he or she made with four stones. The underlying idea was to shoot a double portrait, figural and abstract: one showing the face, the other something that the individual created.

Then I added photographs of objects that immigrants brought from their country and text they wrote in their own hand to explore what it means to be uprooted. With this work, I try to give voice to immigrants and let their pride shine through.

I photograph the portrait of my guests using a Holga plastic lens that lacks definition to transcribe visually some of the loss of identity that immigrants face when they settle in a new country. 

To print my images, I use an alternative process to transfer them to silkscreen paper. This technique, that symbolizes the movement from one country to another and from one life to another, can be as unpredictable as the immigration process and show unexpected results.

The installation above has been set up at Foley Gallery for The Exhibition Lab, a group show studying photography outside of a traditional academic setting. June 26 – July 27, 2019.

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