Photographer: Her story of personal connection to Persian memories, food and lands are conveyed through photography as she wishes for her audience to experience her visit to the homeland through her heart and eyes.
No names accompany photos, as the photographer prefers the expression of sole imagery due to being unable to fully express her essence in her supposed native tongue (Farsi), yet also knowing that her memory-filled soul cannot possibly be encompassed by the limiting, colonial English language.
“Who you are is far too complicated, far too exquisite & far too lovely to ever be contained by language, let alone English.” – Alok Vaid-Menon
Homeland diaspora is-
When you experience both familiarity and alienation while walking the lands of your homeplace.
— realizing how your parents were exiled onto lands that are stolen and not yours to claim – a settler on Indigenous lands, yet also a lost native on your supposed homeland.
— while “whiteness” has forcibly become the key that jabs you in the gut everytime you mispronounce an English utterance. Turned away by poisonous whiteness, yet “not Persian enough” to understand your grandmother’s rich, golden Yazdi accent.
This piece is dedicated to all those revolutionary souls who exist within the in-between…. too alien for here and not colourful enough for anywhere else. We exist together as resilient and beautiful creatures.
“so here you are
too foreign for home
too foreign for here
never enough for both”
– Ijeoma Umebinyuo, “diaspora blues”
You are enough for me, for us,
Tania Talebzadeh
