Borrowed Familiarity
Borrowed Familiarity was photographed in Poland in the summer of 2024 while traveling with my Polish friend Adam. We moved through Warsaw and Gdańsk before visiting the small village where his grandmother lives. As the trip progressed, the photographs shifted from public spaces and brief encounters toward the quieter intimacy of his family home.
I spoke no Polish, and much of the family spoke little English, so Adam often translated between us. Yet familiarity developed through things that required little translation: shared meals, domestic routines, gestures of affection, and the simple experience of being welcomed into someone else’s everyday life.
The work begins with that personal experience but asks a broader question: how does an unfamiliar place begin to feel known? Rather than attempting to describe Poland as a country, the photographs consider how familiarity can be formed through hospitality, routine, shared spaces, and human relationships, even when language and cultural knowledge remain limited.
Borrowed Familiarity sits between distance and recognition, stranger and guest, observation and participation. The closeness in these photographs was real but temporary. They reflect a form of belonging that was never fully mine, yet was briefly extended to me—and the way an ordinary life encountered for only a short time can remain deeply familiar long after leaving.