The lure of the abandoned building. We may pass by it every day wondering what is inside and why it was abandoned. Our interest piqued just enough to pose these questions but our adult apprehension of everything dark and unknown stopping us from ever satisfying this curiosity. I realized a child’s perception is much different.
Streamwood, Illinois. My home town in America for the better part of the last 15 years. Chosen for no particular reason. It’s a simple and quiet town to live.
As my time to relocate is slowly approaching, I tried to assess Streamwood, objectively, while perhaps saying my goodbyes to what has been a happy place.
Change appears to be central in what I found. The demographics and cultural make up of this village changed fundamentally. An attempt to be an objective observer gave me an opportunity to discover a new world which must have existed in parallel to my own.
Childhood memories can be a powerful thing. They shape us in a way nothing else can. They evoke a sense home and often can be a conceptual place defined as home.
“Long after the foresters are gone, the deafening noise of cracking wood along with the unceasing burr of the chainsaw cutting through the tree limbs seems to echo through the mangled landscape. As I stand there, surveying the day’s work, I wonder if it’s only reverberating in my head or if it’s the forest actually crying."
The term Polonia pertains to Poles living abroad, but I would argue it describes a certain attitude. One riddled with anxiety to belong and the contradictory need to stay separated, all interwoven with a theoretical sense of patriotism and an almost monarchic attitude towards the Catholic Church.
This sensation of the intangible found its way into each photo I selected to depict my personal journey, layering it with hidden metaphors, which make the concept of Polonia a highly polarizing subject to my generation.