Public Project
THIS IS THE PLACE for UNHCR
Home is always with you, wherever you go and whatever you face in exile, you are constantly searching for a place that brings back memories of where you came from, a place that never changes.
There are almost one million refugees living in Poland. While the vast majority of them arrived from Ukraine, Poland has also become a home for forcibly displaced people from almost all corners of the world: Central Asia, Latin America, Africa, Middle East. They may be different, but there is one thing they have in common – the need to find a place that reminds them of home. And it’s almost never a place where they sleep. It’s rather a metaphor of home: a church where they find solace and equilibrium, a park which gives them a therapeutic peace of mind, because it reminds them of the place they loved, but will never see again, architecture which brings memories of their home town, people they meet at a centre run by an NGO that offers them a safe space, a riverbank which for them is the accessible emulation of their beloved tropical sea beach – or even a bicycle that gives them a sense of freedom. This is how refugees try to tame the new reality, befriend it and embrace it – by finding somewhere that evokes good memories, gives them strength and helps them feel at home. Their homes have no flags or nationality. It’s an intimate place refugees take with them and try to revitalize once they have found safety. We – the hosts – play a crucial role here by making refugees feel welcome.
“This is the place” is a project conceptualized by a photographer Anna Liminowicz in support of all refugees and UNHCR. Anna asked refugees she met just one question: “What is the place that reminds you of your home?” The set of 11 portraits before your eyes provides a collective reply to this question. In these portraits the people, places they chose and the personalized confession they handwrote in their own language form an inseparable bundle. These are 11 stories about safety they found and hope it gave to them away from home. Some of them are tender, some are sad, some are common and some are extraordinary. But all of them are very personal.
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