Feedly Reader Response #6

CHRISTIANA RIFAAT: SO IT GOES By Grant Gill is a blog post made on February 16^th 2014 to the blog Lenscratch.  This blog post is about Christina Rifaat’s series of images “So It Goes”.  This post includes the images included in her series, Grant Gill’s take on her work, as well as her artist statement.  Rifaat is a recent graduate from the New England School of Photography in Boston, who has been since working on her open-ended piece “So It Goes”.  Her piece is about what home means to her and documenting her mother and brothers lives within it.  Her work isn’t about specific places at home or memories she had their because it appears that they are a constantly moving family and she no longer identifies their home as the same shared space.  After reading her artist stamen I was instantly drawn to her photos for several reasons.

I have seen many pieces focused around home life/ family/ childhood focusing around the morning for the passing of time and wanting to hold on to the past.  However her work has a much different feel to it than others I have seen, it is focused on the disconnection she has with it, is not reminiscent, and doesn’t have a longing or nostalgic feeling for that time period.  The piece has a sadness to it that I have not seen in others revolving around the same theme.  I have recently been living in several different places around the world and people have been asking me what I think of when I think of home, which is one of the reasons this interested me so much.  Rifaat and I see home in a similar way, more about feelings than an actual space. I thought that capturing images of what she experiences while at home as well as what she thinks takes place while she is away was a extremely insightful part of this work.  I would love to know the response her mother and brother had after seeing this series.  I really feel like her images got across her point of the disconnect, distance, and growing apart feeling she has towards home.    

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