No Place Like Home

PHOTOGRAPHY

Nov 6

Inspired by Dorothy’s famous words, No Place Like Home reimagines the idea of home as both comfort and illusion. Set within an imaginary doll’s house, the series explores memory, loss, and identity, where the longing to return collides with the inescapable confines of nostalgia, femininity, and the shifting meaning of belonging.

Photography Vicky Martin

No Place Like Home takes inspiration from Dorothy Gale’s exclamation, “Oh Aunty Em, there’s no place like home!” upon returning from her adventure through Oz. Dorothy realises that the lure of magic and adventure in far away wonderlands cannot replace the comfort and familiarity of home.

However, this series explores how home itself can become a fantasy, namely the memory of home, and what happens when the feeling of being at home changes.

Photographed in an imaginary doll’s house, the series’ setting becomes a repository for feelings of loss and estrangement: growing distance from the home of the past and a subsequent disconnection from the self. A fight to control that which is slipping away, to cling onto the past self, is expressed through the imagined escape back to the childhood doll’s house, where, as children, we were able to control all aspects of a doll’s environment and surroundings.

However, these miniature domestic surroundings also served to instruct young girls on their future expected roles within the household. The two characters in the series then enact the battle between fantasy and reality inherent within the doll’s house: a desire to take comfort in the familiar home of the past, while either recognising or wilfully ignoring the futility of such an escape, one that inevitably returns to the claustrophobic, inherited roles of womanhood.

Ultimately, this struggle leaves behind a deeper sense of loss, displacing the present self further from what was once familiar. Home cannot be returned to; it no longer exists, viewed now through a lens that is no longer rose-tinted.

“The two characters in the series then enact the battle between fantasy and reality.”

About Vicky

She is an award-winning British photographer with a background in art and design. She is best known for her conceptual portraits depicting the conflict between themes of fantasy and reality as well as strength and vulnerability, especially in relation to the female experience.

Her work is held in the permanent collection of FotoNostrum Mediterranean House of Photography in Barcelona, she has been widely published and exhibited nationally and internationally, from Europe to the USA in solo and group shows and her work continues to garner many awards and nominations which include Refocus Color Awards 2024 Winner Fashion & Beauty, Minimalist Photography Awards Portrait Photographer of The Year 2020, Chromatic Awards 2018 Winner Beauty and Fashion, All About Photo Magazine Colors 2018 Winner, 12th Julia Margaret Cameron Awards 2018 Winner Fine Art Single Image and Fine Art Photography Awards 2016 Winner Fine Art Series.

To see more of her work, visit her website or follow her on Instagram

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Inspired by Dorothy’s famous words, No Place Like Home reimagines the idea of home as both comfort and illusion. Set within an imaginary doll’s house, the series explores memory, loss, and identity, where the longing to return collides with the inescapable confines of nostalgia, femininity, and the shifting meaning of belonging.

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JC Verona

No Place Like Home

“The two characters in the series then enact the battle between fantasy and reality.”

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