honorable mention
Jakob Eckstein germany
title
Stranger at Home
I grew up in the USA with German parents, and live in Germany today. While I have always felt at home in both countries, I also feel partially alienated from them both as well. By photographing both countries using the same visual language, I aim to examine my own German-Americaness, and to distill the sense of quiet, intimate strangeness I constantly feel in both places.
In the broadest sense, my work centers around one of two themes. First, how human beings move through and interact with human-made spaces, places and objects. And second, my own ceaseless attempts to communicate various ineffable aspects of my subjective, individual experience through photographs.
Most recently, I have been working on a long-term project about being American and German, while also somehow being neither. I hope to publish this work in book form sometime next year.
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entry description
These five photographs are part of a much larger body of work with the working title "Stranger at Home". The subject of this project is my complicated perspective on my two home countries, Germany and the USA.I grew up in the USA with German parents, and live in Germany today. While I have always felt at home in both countries, I also feel partially alienated from them both as well. By photographing both countries using the same visual language, I aim to examine my own German-Americaness, and to distill the sense of quiet, intimate strangeness I constantly feel in both places.
about the photographer
I am a German-American photographer. I was born and raised in Boston by my German parents. In 2019, I completed a BA in American Studies at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. Then I moved to Berlin, Germany to rediscover my German roots and to study photography at the Ostkreuzschule für Fotografie, where I am still a student.In the broadest sense, my work centers around one of two themes. First, how human beings move through and interact with human-made spaces, places and objects. And second, my own ceaseless attempts to communicate various ineffable aspects of my subjective, individual experience through photographs.
Most recently, I have been working on a long-term project about being American and German, while also somehow being neither. I hope to publish this work in book form sometime next year.
back to gallery