The first time I really acknowledged my Eastern European ancestry was when I was walking through the streets of Krakow at sixteen, whilst on a Jewish heritage trip. I tried to locate my great grandparents in the faces of passers-by, imagining what their life could have looked liked before it was torn apart. I had never felt particularly attached to this part of my ancestry; my only connection to Eastern Europe remains a bowl of purple soup that I cannot pronounce. My Moroccan heritage, though more celebrated within my family, has never fully impacted me either, only occasionally reminding me of its existence in the form of panic at an upside-down slipper.

The project, traces, explores some of the ideas about home and its destruction. It considers the home both as a physical place, and as something familial. The images in this project illustrate the aftermath of a sort of violence: the quietness, calmness and solitude that follows. In the same way that one might go for a stroll in nature or contemplate in bed before falling asleep, the slow process of taking analogue photographs has presented me with a means of reflection.

Inspired by ideas of postmemory, as put forward by Marianne Hirsch, as well as events in my present life, such as my parents’ divorce, I have used photography to preserve things as they are; to try and slow down the process of things falling apart.