Turkish-born photographer Olgaç Bozalp’s ongoing personal series, “Home: Leaving One for Another” often hits too close to home. Focusing on the themes of migration and the infinite reasons for making the definitive decision to leave one’s home, the series were photographed in Konya, the city where Bozalp spent his early years and Istanbul.
The concept for the series connects to the photographer’s own personal journey of leaving his home country, over a decade ago, to resettle in the United Kingdom in search of new opportunities he did not feel were accessible to him back home—he often doubted whether the opportunities in question even existed at all. On the other hand, what he would do once he would arrive at his new “home” was a complete mystery as well as a challenge: He did not know a single person, did not speak the language. The possibility of assimilation was miles away. To Bozalp, the photographs represent the struggles of people seeking a new beginning. “Peoples’ desire to move from one place to another has always fascinated me, both on a political and personal level,” he explains over the e-mail. “I started this series to explore the reasons why and see how they measure to those of my own.”
“Home: Leaving One for Another” was shot in collaboration with stylist Raphael Hirsch, also a migrant to the UK from Nigeria. Together, Bozalp and Hirsch translate the adversities of leaving home into a mix of documentary and abstract imagery. Proving to be continuously curious and magical, the series poses important questions rather than feigning half-baked answers.