In this body of work I focused on the feeling of being in between, the conflict of presents and absence.
In particular my grandfather Stefano Vito Aldo Solazzo who came as a so called ‘Gastarbeiter’ from southern Italy to Germany in the early 60s, is the central figure of this series. Unfortunately he died over 20 years ago on the 17th of June 1997 at the age of 51. At the time I was only four years old. Due to this fact he only excists as a vage idea which consists of small personal family stories and photographic material rather than an exact memory. This work should represent an approach of getting to know who my grandfather was as a person and dealing with my own family history, issues coming along with that and my origin. The unique heritage of my grandfather. Besides that the pictures can be seen as a kind of short story, telling the history of a whole generation of ‘Gastarbeiter’. They left their homeland, their families and friends to find work and some kind of a better future in a foreign country. They were accompanied by multiple feelings. Feelings of longing, dreaming, conflict, disunity, being at home in two different cultures and belonging to neither of them. My grandfather is part of that history and so am I.