Daniel Stier – In My Country

September 26, 2012 · by oitzarisme · in xLegacy

In My Country is a contemporary portrait of London, told through its incredibly diverse population. As the next host of the Olympic Games in 2012 the world’s eyes will be upon London, but the world is already here: 40% 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, before the London Olympic Games