This plantable photobook was designed to develop out of the bottom

Over the years this has led the artist to journey again to her hometown to seize the sensation of residence in an ongoing documentary sequence Motherland, which asks questions: “How can a home be defined through images? How can I make projects that deal with home, migration or memory?” Upon every return to Poland the photographer got down to seize her household and mates who nonetheless stay there, alongside a variety of quiet impressions of the landscapes that she grew up in — “the rhubarb, the tomatoes, all the things that are quiet echoes of memory” she says. “Through these images, I tried to capture not only memories, but also the emotions, atmospheres, and fragments of everyday life that continue to connect me to my roots.”

In a latest self-initiated venture titled Growing Album, Ewlenia introduced these photos collectively to create a reimagining of the standard household album by designing a publication that fairly actually permits her to plant her Polish roots on no matter soil she finds herself on. Whilst choosing photos of individuals, locations and vegetation that maintain deep private that means to translate into a photograph e-book, Ewelina sourced one thing else to go alongside them: seeds that resonated with every reminiscence.

In order to make the paper for the publications seed-sewn pages by hand, the artist used “old maps of my hometown, Lubań, and carefully archived newspaper clippings collected by my grandmother”, to type new sheets. Ewelina then embedded these regional seeds into the paper’s grain while it was nonetheless damp, and as soon as half-dry, started the photograph switch course of: “I chose this technique intentionally: it securely locks the seeds between the paper and the transfer layer, allowing them to remain intact, while still offering the possibility for the seeds to germinate from the back,” she tells us.

The ensuing photos are printed with a tender textured and painterly look — nearly as ephemeral as recollections themselves, stitched along with backyard wire from her grandmother. A photographic vessel that appears alive and tender, the e-book will develop in a different way relying on what overseas floor it greets – a quiet reminder, in bodily type, that “home doesn’t always have to be a fixed place but rather a space that we continuously recreate, depending on where we are at any given moment”, Elena ends.