As a son of a Dutch mother and father from EX – Yugoslavia, I grew up in between two cultures. My father was a Serb from Bosnia and Herzegovina who migrated to the Netherlands before the civil war in the 90s. My father died in 2019 and he left a big void in me. I had questions about the other part of my identity and heritage that I hadn’t connected to before.

‘Where did my father come from?’ and ‘How did this culture shape him into the man he was?’

I took the time to go on a journey and explore my father’s birthplace Bosnia and Herzegovina to trace his roots. Equipped with my camera I walked the same roads he walked when he was a kid, visited places he went to as a young man and found people who knew him and others who never met him. By doing this I constantly asked myself the question:

‘How could my life look like if I was born in Bosnia and Herzegovina instead of the Netherlands?’.

Through this journey, I felt so close to my father like never before. I traced him in the faces of those, on the bumpy roads and unfinished houses, he was there! And at last, I found myself at home just as my father did. The series of photos addresses topics like displacement, identity and home.

This project began in 2018 just before my father’s passing and is still an ongoing exploration of my heritage and self.