A Man Without Country..

Exploring identity, using the foreign to inform the familiar.

Through the use of photography, in a continuing series, I have begun to explore who I am by documenting the otherness I experience in foreign places, thus exposing my otherness in my ‘home’. Uncovering what defines me and where my identity resides. I have solidified myself in my persona, and initiated the excavation of selfhood. Where we are from defines us, however the realization and revelation of this defining force is contingent on the unfamiliar. The foreign enlightens the familiar and challenges the unconscious social and cultural reflexes that have become a habitual feature in our daily lives.
I have travelled many places in my twenty-two eventful years of life, both foreign and domestic. In each geographic location I photographed the colors, landmarks, shapes and vistas that have captured my attention and etched into the journals of my heart. I combined photographs from each day into a single composition. Using photoshop I layered the images and added adjustment layers, coalescing the photographs and maintaining a common visual aesthetic throughout the series.
I have witnessed diverse cultures and social structures, been subject to questionable governmental systems and baffled by language barriers. I proudly identify as Zimbabwean, although I am a citizen of Great Britain and a temporary resident of the USA. By technical categorization, I do not belong anywhere, I have no legal rights in any of the countries I identify with. Wherever I go I am a tourist, a wondering romanticized homeless man, a man without country. There is a claim that we can be and are defined by citizenship, by nationality and those who identify us as fellow countrymen. No country claims me; I am not truly any nationality. Regardless of that fact being one of substantiated truth, I classify myself as Zimbabwean.
We characterize ourselves and are characterized by others, based on the associations bound to the geography we permanently witness. Arabs are generalized as Muslim, Europeans as Catholic, Americans as overweight, Asians as short, and Islanders as easy-going. These societal molds begin to subconsciously encourage conformation to the definition, and provoke actions in unhindered accordance to the implied social laws. Through travel I have seen that other people live by other implied laws, which has exposed the mindless tendencies of my own life. To an undetermined extent we are who we are because of osmosis, we simply absorb the average of those around us.
Every country, society and community has a unique visual culture, from architecture and color to shape and form. I unwittingly photograph what appeals to me around the world, usually what I consider as desirable and pleasing. Isolating each day into a single composition, these memories and experiences are shaping and reforming my identity, my ideologies, values and conceptions of foreign societies in relation to my own beliefs. As a moral fiber I am an amalgamation of many effects, no single entity is abundantly defining, rather each is a grain of sand on a metaphorical beach. We are blind to the details of life that delineate our existence but see only the whole; my compositions reflect this idea in the abstraction of cities and landscapes. Our individual beliefs, convictions and identifiers are merely a pixel in the screen. My ostensible discovery of self is in direct correlation to observing other people. In the course of assigning others their identities and judging cultures and individuals with the rubric of my own background, I have discovered myself.

More info: joshuastrydom.blogspot.com