As a person who moved a country more than once in life (at the age of 5 I immigrated to Israel from Russia, at 28 I've moved to London where I lived 10 years, returning to Israel in 2012), I'm interested in issues of forming an identity in relation to physical place, home and society.

 

One of the main characteristics of London as a city that I was always fascinated by is being compound of such a vast variety of people from almost every corner of the world. In my everyday life in London I happened to meet much more foreign people than English. This project is dedicated to foreign people living in London.

 

Every day hundreds of immigrants arrive to the UK, they come to work and study, learn English and develop themselves. Some leave after a while, some stay for years. Everyone has his own expectations and experiences. The city encompasses all those people, offering them stimulation and refuge.

 

The project is a series of diptychs, juxtaposing portraits with cityscapes. I wanted to explore the connection between people and places on a personal and philosophical level, as every place carries some emotional, philosophical and cultural value. People assign value to places by leaving their mark on them or relating them to personal experiences.

 

The sitters are friends, acquaintances, or people I happened to meet. I spent time with each sitter in his or her home, talking about the reasons they left their homelands to come to London,  their experiences in the city and places they feel special connection to. Then I went to explore those places. The juxtaposition of the portrait and the cityscape was born through conversations with the sitters but also from my personal interpretation of what the sitters project, in order to surface questions of individual and cultural identity.