A Sense of Belonging – Clara

A Sense of Belonging​ is a multimedia project comprised of photography, interviews, personal writing, memorabilia, and collage. This body of work asks questions about the meaning of belonging and home, and how my own family and friends define belonging based on their own experiences. The photographs consist of portraits and documentary-style images that hope to capture certain environments of comfort for my interviewees and places that spark a feeling of belonging for myself. These photographs were taken in New York and Germany, to represent two places of belonging for me, and the two sides of interviews I conducted. The memorabilia component adds both context to my own and family stories and allows an intimate space filled with both past and present memories.

This project is not to define belonging for everyone, rather it hopes to give a broad overview of different experiences, and show the common thread between us all. It is a way to try and explore belonging for myself and the way my ideas around belonging interact with others. This work inquires about what lets us function in this world: How can one define belonging? What does home mean? Can certain objects, places, communities, or people evoke a sense of safety and belonging? How do bilingual individuals’ belonging differ from others? Through adding personal writing and poetry, I have found additional ways to reflect on the questions I am asking.