LIFE STORIES
When my mother was a young girl in Latvia, she was told by a fortune teller that she would cross the sea and marry an Englishman. As unlikely as this seemed to her at the time, it was in fact to be her destiny – in 1944 she, my grandmother and step grandfather fled Latvia to escape the Soviet invasion, eventually settling in Britain after the war. My grandfather, a renowned actor in his home country, remained in Latvia where he lived for his entire life.
These images are a collage of photographs, identity photos and documents, personal letters and effects documenting the life stories of my Latvian family. In the first half of the series are photographs from the Latvian family album portraying life in Latvia till the war turned their world upside down. In the second part, their life in England is shown - from their arrival on these shores up until my mother’s death 10 years ago.
Life as a refugee in the postwar years seemed bleak – registered as aliens and only allowed to work in certain jobs, my grandmother and grandfather lived in separate male and female camps. My mother trained as a nurse in a TB hospital where she met my father, who was a patient there. They gradually learned English, gained British citizenship and got used to their new identities. For my mother, marriage to her Englishman and family life followed. My grandparents, reunited at last after many years living apart, saved enough money to buy a tiny new bungalow where they quietly spent the rest of their lives. They never returned to Latvia, but there always remained a nostalgia for their old lives – what the Welsh call hiraeth – that deep and melancholy longing for a lost homeland, part memory, part imagination, the fate of the émigré.
See blog pages for further insights into their life in Latvia.
Handmade accordion book of photographic collages displayed in a Latvian silver cigarette case which crossed the sea with them – a tiny part of their life story.
Digital collage of scanned family photographs, identity photos and documents . Displayed as a hand-made artist book printed on archival matte Hahnemühle Rice Paper, image size 2.5 x 4 in, see Books page. 2024