Home Is Not A Place

Product Information

Johny Pitts is a photographer and writer born in Sheffield. He is the winner of the 2020 Jhalak Prize and the 2021 European Essay Prize. He lives and works in London. Home can be a warm hug when we feel our worlds falling apart, or a dear friend’s laughter. Home can be the memories of the stories we draw our life lessons from. Home is the friendships we forge, the people we can count on, the people we know love us as we are, the people who keep loving and accepting us even when we mess up. Home is knowing we always have somewhere to run to, and we’ll be just fine, because home is within us. Home is assurance that we can be ourselves, and be enough. Home is knowing we can always do more, be more, but still be enough as we are. Each of these artists disrobe America of its myths—and unveil the complicated and tedious nature of being an American. The works included in the exhibition celebrate the dissonance of loving the home they’ve found while championing, as Baldwin notes, “…the right to criticize her perpetually.” (3) For each moment of peaceful stillness, there is the arduous fight. Living well, building and supporting a community, and sharing one’s story are all forms of protest. To exist as an other in this country is the most meaningful and profound act of resistance. Home is sharing a joint with my siblings – talking about life, with no judgments, giving and seeking advices. When we reached adulthood, we developed a stronger and deeper relationship with each other when in fact, we fought a lot when we were teenagers. How surprising things can turn out with family.

Home is where you have an unlimited supply of clean drinking water. I realized this thought when I came to Africa and filtered my own water to drink everyday. According to the Dictionary.com, the term “Home” is a place in which one’s domestic affections are centered. Home is not same as a house. Sure thing that home can be a house, but it stretches out more than just a roof, four walls, windows and a door. Home is where one was raised. Where one played, laughed, cried, and learned. It is where one grew. Where that same person became himself or herself- a strong, intelligent individual that is confident. Home is beyond being just a place. Home is an environment. It is the emotion that signifies greeting once doors are open. It is the people, friends, neighbors that are waiting for returnees. Therefore, home is not a place but a feeling where love resides, memories are created, friends always belong, and happiness never ends. A self-taught photographer, working in the tradition of British documentary photography, Pitts was supported by the inaugural Ampersand/Photoworks Fellowship working closely with the Photoworks team for twelve months to allow him to develop this new series. Shumaker, S. A., & Taylor, R. B. (1983). Toward a clarification of people-place relationships: A model of attachment to place. In N. Feimer & E. S. Geller (Eds.), Environmental psychology: Directions and perspectives. New York: Praeger.Despite the inexplicable and elusive nature of one’s sense of placelessness, it is a heavy bindle slung over one’s shoulder as one presses forward. Within this context of cultural estrangement and hybridity, communities have been built. Thus the exhibition looks not to the difficulties faced by outsiders making home in America, rather these artists explore the joy and power found within the spaces that they have created.

No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.”

Become a Photoworks Friend

Finally we present our chosen Community Submission. For this issue, readers were asked to send images based around the idea of The Unhomely, the conception of an estranged experience of home proposed by Sigmund Freud and later developed by postcolonial writer Homi Bhabha. We’re proud to be able to show the image Money Blindness by Accra-based creative Ikon Shepherd. We hope you enjoy this issue. Bless out house as we come and go. Bless our home as the children grow. Bless our families as they gather in. Bless our home with love and friends.”