Forty percent of all Londoners were not born in the UK. This phenomenon is the starting point of In My Country – a series of portraits depicting immigrants living in London.
In each portrait Pakistanis, Poles, Ghanaians, Indians, Peruvians all don their national dress. The dress serves as a symbol of their cultural heritage and lends their portraits a timeless quality. All of the subjects pose within their own familiar surroundings, backdrops of everyday life: a neighborhood street, a dining room, a front porch.
Indicative of a unique cultural heritage, the traditional costume is visually confronted against the urban chaos of London. In a globalized world which tends to flatten anything distinctive, such clothing comes to represent a bastion of cultural resistance and an assertion of identity.—Daniel Stier
This series by London-based photographer Daniel Stier will be exhibited at Stour Space from October 5-29, 2012 as part of the Photomonth East London Photography Festival.
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I did a similar project in 2010 in Salzburg, Austria, which is known as a quite conservative city. In “Portraits of a City,” I photographed immigrants living in Salzburg, Austria, photographing one person each from as many countries as could be found, in locations of their choice. The photos were shown in a large-scale outdoor exhibition, on two bridges in the center of town and along the river Salzach:
http://anjahitzenberger.com/index.php/projects/a/salzburg-portraits