No Place Like Home

Dichotomy by Sandra Zarneshan

“I feel home here. Moved by the global economy needs, we exist as a mass of impermanent nomads with a contrived feeling of belonging. The consequent sense of transience inevitably affects the construction of relations with others and the places in which we live.”

The Endless Winter of Kashmir by Camillo Pasquarelli

A group of boys swims in the Dal Lake of Srinagar, the only safe area after curfew. Defined by a Persian poet of as "the paradise on earth", the valley of Kashmir is today one of the most militarized zone in the world, where much of the population feels that their home has been occupied.

Happy by Anne Ackermann

A young Somali girl gets trapped in a curtain at her grandmother's house in Kisenyi, in Kampala that is a temporary home to the highest number of Somali migrants in Uganda. The girl is waiting to be reunited with her mother, who has already been resettled to Scandinavia, where she awaits the day when her three children can follow her.

Memento by Muhcine Ennou

This photograph came about at a time in my life when I felt torn between two countries, Morocco and the Netherlands. Place and identity are intricately intertwined and this conflict unsettled me: I felt like I belonged nowhere. As a way to reconconcile this conflict, I wanted to photograph the places that held significance to me in my home country.

Montana Noir by Lauren Grabelle

The rural and wilderness landscapes of Montana are well known for their implausible beauty and serenity. In 2017, I began wandering, after hours. It’s here in the nighttime streets and alleys of Montana, a place where the dark is electric, that my own inner landscape, my inscape, has revealed itself to be, perhaps, finally at home.

Learning to Leave - Flowers by Charmaine Poh

The childhood home, like kin, is an inheritance borne not out of choice nor effort, but sheer happenstance. I moved away when I was eight, and returned after 16 years to document the remarkable emotional resonance of place. Using found childhood photographs superimposed onto newly made photographs of the site, I tried to compress the years between the family that was and the individuals we are today.

How to Slouch When Sleeping by Augustine Paredes

This self-portrait is a re-enactment of my initial reaction towards living in shared spaces when I first arrived in Dubai as an overseas Filipino worker. I rented a top bunk bed in a small room with four people. I was unable to unpack and settle my belongings due to the lack of space. As Filipinos, we have a saying — “kung maikli ang kumot, matutong bumaluktot,” which means, if the means are short, learn to slouch and make it work.

What is home? Where is home? Notions of belonging and feeling at home are always at the forefront of life in the UAE, where the majority of the population are expatriates. For many, home is not a place at all but a feeling and the current exhibition at Gulf Photo Plus is the result of an open call on the subject.

Whether it be the patterns on the doors in old Dubai, a landscape or a moment of physical togetherness, these images explore a sense of home that is common to all of us and, yet, unique.

What struck me most about the exhibition is that whilst many of the images don’t scream “home” to me, they showed me moments of intimacy, humour and an inner landscape that I am not normally privy to. The selection is also expertly curated, with a kind of thread running through the show that allows for meditative thinking as to the lives of the photographers, their emotions as well as the subjects of each image.

No Place Like Home. September 17 - November 3, 2018. Gulf Photo Plus, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai.