It doesn’t have a settled name yet. Home Is a Living Breathing Thing, or Homesick? I keep going back and forth.
For years I’ve asked people where they would like to be photographed. Somewhere that feels like home, I’d suggest. The answer was almost never an address.
Home was a person. A language, a routine, an object. Somewhere they had left, or somewhere they no longer felt welcome. Several countries at once. A place they had built for themselves, on purpose.
I know the feeling. I fled Boko Haram shortly before graduating, left Nigeria for Scotland, and had to begin again. From there came Sunderland, Wales and, eventually, Hull. I have known the security of a loving family while knowing my queerness exists beyond the framework family is usually expected to fit. I became chronically ill. I nearly died from COVID, went back to work in the NHS, and had to reconsider what a body, a career and a future could be.
I’m British now, with an unmistakably Nigerian accent. Maiduguri, Scotland, Sunderland, Wales, Hull, my family and the life I’ve built have all answered to the word home, and none of them has held it completely. I’m neither special nor alone in that. So, the question has earned its own body of work.
I want to make portraits with people across the North of England whose lives, families and identities cross countries, cultures and generations. Each sitter will help shape their portrait. Each portrait will carry a second layer you can open with your phone: a mother’s voice, the sound of a station platform, a family photograph, a few words in another language, or silence. Whatever that person needs their portrait to hold.
The photographs will stand on their own on the wall. You won’t need a smartphone to meet them.