Photo series: Strand-scape

Street meets land, and then you're stranded

I am a person caught between many environments. Grew up in a village in Gagauzia, Moldova, lived in Moscow, Russia for a while, too. Went a handful of times to my mom's university city of Odessa, Ukraine, to visit my godmom. Then got thrown across the ocean to live in NYC. That lifestyle also comes in contrast with when we go upstate to stay at our lakehouse. Now I have a lot of family living in Turkey, so that, too, now has a piece of my heart, especially considering that Gagauzian Turks and Turkey's Turks do share the same ancestors. 

What is home? It's split between so many places. It's a question I posed to myself a while ago, but haven't yet found a clean cut answer. I find myself often at a crossroads between landscapes and streetscapes, rural and urban spaces that pull me in different directions. That duality also extends into my photographic practice. Do I focus more on streetscapes? Or landscapes? No, I will once again take the path of combination, hence, I will now focus on strandscapes, a word that carries both the lands and the streets that I set my foot on. 

A weighted word it becomes – 'strand.' I do feel that way quite often. Major changes completely derail me, and in the time that it takes to bounce back, I am stranded, in the middle of all the complicated emotions I try to navigate through.  I sense the feeling of strandedness, as well as the tension between land and street will be felt a lot in the coming months, as I embark on travel across Europe.