Identity Crisis

A series made in the aftermath of Brexit when I began to re-examine my European roots. As the child of an English father and Latvian mother I was brought up to feel British. My mother did not teach me Latvian so I can neither speak nor read it. Since my mother's death I accumulated all her Latvian paraphernalia – letters, books, photographs, newspaper cuttings. I find myself going through them all, hopelessly searching for some clues to their meaning but it is a closed world to me which I cannot decipher. These images are a way of making my frustration concrete - random extracts from letters, books and papers have been grafted on to my own photographs of the stark Cornish landscape near my home. The incongruous contrast between the two mirrors the internal conflict I feel - half British, half Latvian, now sadly isolated from the rest of Europe.

Digital collage of scanned documents and text and my own photographs. Image size 10 x 10 cm. Printed on archival matt Hahnemühle photo rag 308gms.

2020