#fotomonday

‘China Dream’ explores the fractured identities that second generation diaspora experience as they’re straddled their birth country and their motherland. Teresa Eng, whose parents immigrated to Canada from China via Hong Kong, explores the country of her ancestors.

Teresa visited China between 2013-2017. Her cultural memory of a place, where she has never lived, contrasts with a China in flux. During her stays, she witnessed constant cycles of construction, destruction and reconstruction and multiple cities and its surrounding towns. This inspired the stripped back colours of her images which were achieved by meticulously created handprints in the darkroom.

Each visit offered an insight to a country that is in the process of building its future while simultaneously reconstructing and reinterpreting its past, creating a new type of culture. Historical monuments and buildings, destroyed during Cultural Revolution are being rebuilt haphazardly ¬– often as facsimiles of the originals. The sprawling metropolis envelop the neighbouring countryside as more people move to the city – destroying an immeasurable amount of historical artefacts.

‘China Dream’ – the title of a patriotic calendar found at a newsagents –was also a term popularised in 2013 by General Secretary Xi Jinping. It also alludes to the American Dream, where hard work and entrepreneurial spirit will lift up each individual and the nation into prosperity.

Congregation by Sophie Green is a celebration of Southwark’s Aladura Spiritualist African churches and congregations. Often referred to as “white garment” churches, Green’s images engage with rarely-documented dynamic communities who unite each weekend for Sunday service. Aladura is a denomination of Christianity predominantly practised by Yoruba Nigerians, and in the last 40 years has become a ubiquitous part of London life – particularly in Southwark, which has the highest concentration of African churches outside the continent. Congregation  observes a rich tapestry of worshippers and Sunday services, which are spoken in Yoruba and form a key social meeting point and place of cultural solidarity between African Londoners.Congregation asks questions about how individuals find collective identity and power within subcultures, and how cultural practice is assimilated into modern global contexts: traditional dress, food and customs rub up against modern technology and fashion, while devotional interiors colourfully fill the hidden, often industrial spaces that churches inhabit. Green also engages directly with individuals through collaborative, posed portrait sessions and photographic workshops which serve to empower and engage with members of each congregation and their faith. Mixed in with naturalistic images of men, women and children, these stylised portraits highlight the performance of identity and communality that underpins religious practice.  - Text by Loose Joints Congregation is published and designed by Loose Joints, an artist-run publisher and design studio exploring progressive approaches to image making in book form. It was founded in London in 2015 by Sarah Piegay Espenon and Lewis Chaplin.

Cruces is the name of a pueblo in Chihuahua, México where my mother was born and raised, and is an ongoing project exploring the concept of identity. Over the years, I have gradually become observant on how incredibly arbitrary and easily shaped an individuals developing identity can be based on his or her environment. With Cruces, I am interested in exploring the various factors that influence it, specifically by cultural norms and the media. As I am placed in a contrasting yet familiar territory, my grandfather’s cattle ranch, family members, and objects marked by time, pose questions about my own worldviews by examining a space that has indirectly embedded itself into my existence.

I grew up in a religious household in a small southern town. My mother was raised in the Sanctified Holy Church and my father was raised Southern Baptist. As a result of the strict beliefs I had been taught since birth, I did not feel comfortable coming out as queer until I was 21 years old.

For the majority of my life, I was unsure where I belonged in the world. It was difficult to navigate the space I was growing up in because I could not relate to it or understand my place within it. I never felt like my truest, most open self when conforming to the culture and ideologies around me. As I came to terms with my own identity, the photo series Infinite Tenderness came to fruition.

In 2016, I began exploring the notion of intimacy and identity among the LGBTQ+ community in the American South. These are the people I have met and connected with along the way. Through this work, I have documented the exploration of one’s body, sexuality, and gender that comes along with growing up and identifying oneself.

My intention is to empower others and create an accepting space for queer kids that grow up in small towns and rural areas. Each individual in this series is dependent on another for support and understanding of their ever-changing identities.

This is a visual representation of today’s American youth.

I grew up in a country where shaming is a lifelong tradition for positioning someone in society. What makes us escape our own country and how do we live based on values we once learnt and always questioned? How do we struggle, allow and accept? Aidos talks about the idea behind what we see, what we feel, how we express desire and what we believe is possible, all filtered through, and constrained by, society. In my effort to draw the portrait of Greece in transition, I came across a constant worry steaming from comparison of the self's state of being with the ideal social context's standard. Keeping in mind the idea of naivety behind our choices, I hope to document the freedom of the commonplace and the individual struggle of the becoming. In Greek mythology, Aidos was the goddess of shame, modesty and humility.

Aiming to document a post-apocalyptic story, the Odds and Ends series presents itself as a documentary poem about the signs announcing the end of world. These images were designed as an obituary of the Earth, and were mainly shot in Metropolitan France and in Guiana between 2013 and 2017. The last (man or animal?) travels the world to collect remains of a powerful but fragile nature, where the four elements (air-earth-water-fire) mingle with carcasses of technologies.

Sit Silently portrays outskirts of Latvia as well as the outlying moments of its capital centre. It reflects on silence in its aspect of contemplation, introverted rest, unpretentious celebration of life. At the same time the silence emerges as manifestation of dealing with inner dramas via the resignation. To remain silent representing a detached monument of inner resentment still seems to be quite common ways for this (Post- Soviet) territory, at least, the route, often travelled by the author.

Images tend to touch those points where contemporary Europe meets different layers of the past (like Soviet and National Awakening period in Latvia) which conflict and complement each other at the same time. Pictures capture author's urge for a slower time zone, sense of home and creativity of daily routines beyond the usual urban experience. While admiring peripheral moments with their own significance, values and feeling, author seeks to localize her own identity or core.

This reminds of a passage from Franz Kafka: You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

Kwei Yih is a project deeply rooted in my own personal experience. After many years of roaming away from home, i found myself falling into a state of anxiety and helplessness, eagerly loooking to regain a sense of belonging. However, it is such a complicated emotion. I can still call it a feeling of happiness when nostalgia and homesickness come to me.