ARCHITECTURE & PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY

In the past few years, I traveled extensively across North America. While my roots originally stem from the Middle east, my mother's family moved to distant Canada. Although my mother returned here at the age of 18, my childhood is filled with memories of summer trips and big holidays to visit the extended family. Those trips were always filled with endless experiences. Daily trips to Wonderland, amusement park with my cousins. Safaris in appropriate attire for the savanna. I've visited Niagara Falls countless times, perhaps even more than most Canadians themselves. But beyond all these indulgences, we had precious family time. Drawing with chalk on the asphalt of the driveway of garage at my grandparents home. Playtime with grandpa, grandma, uncles, and aunts. Lots of creativity, lots of family, lots of summer feeling. Canada remains a warm memory and in my mind and heart is connected to a feeling of a home. Of family, of a place of peace for me. Over the years, there have been many thoughts of moving away. Today it's clear to me that the life there was a life of vacation; They say you take yourself wherever you’ll go, you can’t get away from yourself, yet there is no doubt that there is a significant difference in life there compared to here in Israel. Not in a “good vs bad” way, but different. And sometimes when everything here is hectic, and the feeling of pressure rises, and it's a bit hard for me to breathe, the thought arises again. About a farm in open spaces, with space and endless fields. About a place where it seems it is easier to be yourself without everybody minding your business, as Israelis love to do. Without thinking about the army and if my children will have to go, thoughts about what keeps me here and what attracts me there. And the urban architecture. The homes in my grandparents' neighborhood look as if they were taken straight from a typical American (or in this case, Canadian) movie. A suburban neighborhood, brick walls houses with red roofs, each with a garage, a staircase to the upper floor, all the rooms are wall to wall carpets, wall to wall. Inner gas hitting sistem making sure the house is always warm. On my last visit, I understood. It is pleasant in Canada. People are very, very nice. They do keep the stereotype they got around the world. No one will honk at me at a traffic light, even if it's been green for 2 minutes already. It feels like there is room to breathe. Yet, here is still my home. My first home. This pleasant feeling can and should be created from within, from inside me. From the family I'm building and the family I have. From my close friends. From deep acquaintance with myself (and that's a daily job) not to avoid unpleasant emotions, deal with them. Even to hug them closely and accept them. From the choices I make, like where to live here in the country and at what pace, be awer whether it is my pace or what the society reflects as should. Live according to my value, creating my environment for myself. As part of the process I went through and still going through, I documented the different homes along the way. Colorful homes, each different from the other yet still a very clear style of a Canadian American suburb. These houses are an eternal symbol to me of the American dream. A house, a wooden fence, children playing outside in the garden. Quiet, calm, family life. They appear in every Hollywood American movie, especially those that go back to the 60s and 70s. And within all this remains one thing, my Canadian dream. A white house, with a lush green lawn for children to run and play on, where they can crunch on the asphalt floor in the summer and play in the snow in winter. Where there's space for every house, and between the houses there's air to breathe. One mailbox waiting for letters. I hear a lot of people talking about moving away because it's hard, it's stressful, the government is corrupt, and there's nothing to do. And I think that the choice to be somewhere else should come not from the non, but from the yes. From a desire to try different specific lives, from a desire to learn and experience, to expand our inner world and our familiarity with different environments. Because our feelings we'll take with us everywhere and adjust them to the specific situation. Change needs to come from within. I will continue to document these trips and these lives and learn to create them myself in my own way. The full documentation can be seen in the full album right here.