Stay Forever More is a semi fictional, reflective journey into my childhood and adolescence, attempting to reconstruct and confront difficult memories. The project engages with themes of home, belonging and coming of age.

 

My family left Poland due to financial instability there. We arrived in Ireland at the height of the ‘Celtic Tiger’, along with thousands of others in search of a better life. For most of my life, the idea of home has always had a bittersweet resonance. The title of the project comes from Green and Red of Mayo by The Saw Doctors, a song that is infamous in my Irish hometown, Castlebar. From a young age that particular lyric has echoed in my mind as a reflection on emigration.

 

Settling in was a slow process for me, I express this period of my life with images that explore in-between states. This is how I saw my hometown for a long time, a place of passing, a transitional home. I ended up never quite fitting in, but as time went on I found comfort in other people in similar situations. I left Castlebar five years ago, but now coming back to the hometown that I thought I had to run away from, feels completely different. The inertia of a small town that I thought would drag me down now calls as living costs of Dublin mount, forcing many to leave.

 

Returning to Mayo with fresh eyes, I now photograph as a love letter to the complexities of my hometown, my upbringing, and what it means to be Irish.