'Life Lines' is a multimedia project developed in collaboration with the Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum and Holocaust Museum Houston. It comprises four interconnected works: 'Naomi - A Life Line', 'Traces', 'From Her Mother’s Country', and 'Reunions'.
The project originates from the story of Naomi Kaplan Warren, a Jewish woman from Poland who survived three concentration camps where she lost most of her family. After the liberation of Bergen-Belsen by the Oxfordshire Regiment, soldier Arthur Tylor notified Naomi’s relatives in the USA, facilitating her emigration. In America, Naomi rebuilt her life, remarried, and established a highly successful import company, which she managed independently following her husband's untimely death.
My work centres on soil as a medium that connects us to place and serves as a silent witness to history. It explores themes of displacement and memory reflecting on the enduring impact of historical events on personal and collective narratives.
'Naomi - A Life Line' installation with soil, archival images and text, Museum of Soldiers of Oxfordshire, August 2025
The installation entitled 'Naomi – A Life Line', which includes soil, archival images, and text, maps Naomi’s journey: from her birthplace in Wołkowysk (then Poland, now Belarus), through Białystok, Warsaw, the concentration camps, then Paris, New York, and finally Houston. Each collected pinch of soil, gathered via a network of family, friends, and colleagues, marks moments of connection, displacement, post-war border shift and even contemporary political complexity, as samples from Belarus proved especially difficult to obtain.
In 'Traces', these soils are transformed into chromatographs, where imprints on light-sensitive paper render mineral, moisture, and memory into abstract images – visual residues of the landscapes Naomi traversed.
'Traces' - framed soil chromatographs, unique, Museum of Soldiers of Oxfordshire, August 2025
The photographic series 'From Her Mother’s Country' focuses on my young daughter engaging with soil from Warsaw – a place of connection between Naomi and me (Naomi was awaiting a visa to the UK there before the war broke out; I was in Warsaw, embarking on my professional life after graduation). The child’s tactile curiosity offers a quiet meditation on belonging, connection, and emotional geography between past and present, homeland and diaspora.
From Her Mother's Country, photographs, Museum of Soldiers of Oxfordshire, August 2025
'Reunions' is based on archival film stills from 1946, drawn from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. These evocative images depict the heartfelt embraces between war refugees who had crossed the Atlantic and their families. These stills capture moments filled with relief, joy, and disbelief after years of separation. Here I wanted to highlight photography’s capacity to capture moments of extraordinary human connections.
'Reunions', films stills from archival footage, Museum of Soldiers of Oxfordshire, August 2025
installation images from 'Life Lines' exhibition at Museum of Soldiers of Oxfordshire, August 2025