Mother and daughter, in lace collars and with disheveled hair, look defiant and slightly frightened, as if they had been caught off guard during some secret ceremony
Matti is an opera composer. He was ten when his family left the USSR. He had been passionate about music since childhood, so they took his balalaika with them. Very few things from that first suitcase have survived — he was too young when he became an emigrant.
The project's participants gather with their old suitcases. Standing together in the middle of the road, they seem neither settled nor passing through. Each person lights another's face with a smartphone light
The image is composed of the portraits of all participants, made using double exposure with their home's window. The light from the window, dissolving the face features, alludes to the never-fully-closed window into the past that every immigrant carries, no matter how well they may have settled in a new country