Over the past year and a half, home has been on my mind. I’ve been questioning its definition and location, how it comes to be, what it consists of. I’ve been asking if a definition of home exists. 

The strangers who spoke with me about home talked about broken family relationships, heartbreak, coming home to one’s body, and about the process of breaking cycles of inherited sabotage and hurt. They spoke about sanctuary, about how and when the people around you become your home rather than a place. They openly shared their experiences, joys, and hurts surrounding home. In speaking with them, I felt it was imperative to answer the question myself. 

How do I define home? What does home look like to me?

Affection was always present for me in the home space though it existed among generations of emotional repression and familial dysfunction. To show love was to cater to the preset expectations of what a home should look like, not what it truly contained. It was not accepting of queerness or dissent. Through my desire to understand, I know that a place is not home when unease is a consistent presence. Home is a place where opposing states of emotion coexist - comfort intertwines with a sense of disquietude. The dance between the two is based in love and care. In this balance, the commitment to both existing together is its rich complexity.

I have found that home is a set of actions. The home I want for myself takes repeated intention, action, and consistent effort. It comes into being by  identifying what does not feel supportive to personal growth and intimacy. It comes into being by questioning what feels threatening to my well being and removing it if necessary. I create my sense of home by observing things or actions I want surrounding me and acting on them. 

In this project, I make photographs of the landscapes around me, my physical residence, and the spaces in which others reside. I realized that my definition of home is shaped through scrutiny, observation, and curiosity. I look at others to observe the ways intimacy appears. They look at myself and my camera. I scrutinize the photographs in the editing process. We are seeing and being seen within different versions and ideas of home.