Sometimes, what we remember of home isn’t always what we return to. Things change in our absence – familiar faces leave, new elements enter the frame, spaces are rearranged.
But what if none of that has taken place, and what we find instead are merely things we haven’t noticed before?
Rediscovery, as visual artist Sandra Dans uncovers in this photo essay, is the gift of a new lens. It’s what comes of the change that occurs in the ways we see – the ways we look – as we live out our absence. We don’t realize it until upon returning, when the familiar starts to appear different in our gaze, but home, sometimes, does not really change in our absence. We do.
– The Galvanizers
It’s quite a unique feeling to move back somewhere. For some people, moving back home might be considered a sign of defeat. For me, it was a small victory. Not everyone who wants to return gets to do so.
I lived abroad for 30 months in a country where most of my compatriots spoke eagerly of returning, not because we did not appreciate our host country, but because we didn’t consider ourselves home.
Three months after moving back, I found a cosmic significance in my home spaces that wasn’t there before I left.
– Sandra Dans
About Sandra:
Sandra Dans is a photographer, visual artist and podcaster living and working in Southeast Asia. She lives with two dogs, five humans and innumerable fish.
See more of Sandra’s photography over at www.sandradans.com.
