“ No Home but Homes ”

— a biographical and visual reflection on how home isn’t a single place

The phrase “Home sweet home” has always unsettled me. It suggests that home is singular—a fixed, perfect place of ultimate comfort and belonging. But for those of us who have left our birth countries, home is rarely just one place.

Home becomes a patchwork: a mosaic of houses, objects, people, and memories. It is an aroma in the air, the curve of a familiar smile, the typography of a street sign, or the way someone holds a coffee cup. In this project, I aim to capture these fragments of home, some fleeting and ephemeral, others enduring and utopian—representing not just where home has been but where it might exist in the future.

Some of these moments are deeply personal, like my mother, who once embodied home for me. She is now part of the past, but her presence continues to shape my understanding of what home means.

(This project came alive while taking the class titled “Developing the Continuity between Your Life and Photography Workshop”, taught by Carlos de La Sancha via StrudelMedia.)

Home was where I took my first photograph, with my first camera.

/ France: Compiègne / — Home was where I took my first photograph, with my first camera. / France: Compiègne /

Home was summers with my two grandmas. Now, they are in the sky.

Was home the bedroom where I spent my childhood daydreaming, or was it the view from my window?

Home was where these four human beings stood together.

Home was the memory of my parents by the seaside.

Home is a recipe, written clumsily so we never forget the taste.

Is Home where my family had to fly 12 hours to see me?

Home is where I love napping after landing in Charles-De-Gaulle airport, and observing the light through the green curtains.

Is home wherever I hang photos of us eating watermelons as kids?

Is home where I make myself my own cup of coffee?

Home is where I can sleep under the stars.

Does home live in the juxtaposition of patterns, colors, and scents?

Home is where I can see the sky turn orange, then blue, then dark. Then there is tomorrow.

Is home the place where I picked and placed each piece of furniture?

Home in accepting that we can be shining, and dying, all in the same time...

Home is the feeling of 'homeness' in a couple of dried flowers... because I can't let time go by!

Home is my mum, my first country. Hanen.

Is home in a gaze that tells me everything I need?

Home is where we can be cringy and cheesy.

Can home be in the shifting shadows that stir my heart?

Home in a sweet cup of Turkish coffee on the Bosphorus.

Home, or the place we would leave the first of July, and come back the 31s of August.

Home is in our resilience, as well as on our stairs.

Home where the meals are the most comforty.

Home where we find ourselves saying "hamdoullah"

Home is the place we pack our suitcases before leaving on a trip

Is home every place I brush my tooth at?

Are our places of work a bit of a home too?

Is home where we had our last cup of coffee together?

Is home in the negatives I am re-discovering?

Can home be a random door you are curious to open?

Is home where you see yourself in a stranger?

Do we searching for a bit of home when reading other's people story?

Can home still feel like home when the people who made it are gone?

Home in a transition between light and shade

An adopted home, or a home that adopted me

Home in our collections of objets and books

Home is where we know the dimensions of everything

Is home the small little house of my grandma that felt like a castle back then?

Home might be in the first trip we took together

Home is our first studio in Haight Asbury, where we spent a summer never leaving each other!

Home where we can have our first barbecue of the year