Being and Becoming

Becoming is a concept derived from philosophy, which considers change in itself as a process and transition from one state to another. It refers to the transformation and changes in one’s way of being. Change is inevitable and an essential part of the world.

This project is about emigration. I was interested in ideas of hybrid identity, exploring concepts of the third space and the Old and the New, the polarity of living in-between cultures, languages and borderlines. According to some scholars, the third space is an interaction and articulation between two or more cultures and languages. The Old and the New are states of being, and negotiations between social, national, geographic and linguistic spaces. Homi Bhabha claims that these negotiations are ‘the process of cultural hybridity’ which ‘‘gives rise to something different, something new and unrecognizable, a new area of negotiation of meaning and representation.”

Emigrants are Beings in motion in this New “socio-and-geo-cultural” context and they are located in the territory between the “Old which is part of them and the New which is becoming part of them”. Emigrants are invited to transform their identity, and renegotiate according to new and changing situations. My aim was to explore these complex intersections photographically, by dealing with feelings and ideas of difference or strangeness, memory, identity and mobility.

Virgílio Ferreira (1970) is a Portuguese photographer. In 2012 he gained a MA in Photography at the University of Brighton. His work has been exhibited in Europe, the Middle East, the United States and South-East Asia, and has won several awards.