Push and Pull

My partner's parents left Cameroon for New York before he was born. Raised in the US, he had limited contact with his parent’s country or relatives. In 2011, we traveled to Cameroon and spent several months getting to know his family of strangers. Presented as wife, I was afforded emotional intimacy, and I deeply connected with our family members. Still, as a white foreigner, I aroused a colonial legacy of wariness and suspicion. This combination of intimacy and distance forced me to consider family dynamics from various perspectives. I photographed as my partner navigated his relatives' love, assumptions, expectations, and frustrations. What began as a series of private photographs, transitioned into a project about the impact of migration on family identity and relationships.

The title of this project references “Push and Pull Migration Theory”, which examines the social factors that push someone to leave their country and/or pull them toward another.

A family's perceptions of foreign life rarely match the realities immigrants face. Often, a gap forms between what is expected at home and what family abroad can fulfill. I am interested in the evolving relationships between relatives: those who leave, those who stay behind, and those who are born abroad.