Letters to My Mother (2010)

Exchanging Lives Between Bulgaria and The Netherlands

Letters to my mother is Hristina Tasheva’s project, who after her graduation emigrated from Bulgaria to The Netherlands. Despite having a university degree, she had to work as a cleaner and, as an immigrant in Western Europe her expectations were crushed by her illegal status. In her own words, this disillusionment gave birth to her work, becoming influenced by time and geography and using photography as a universal language. In her photography project “A letter to my mother” she describes her difficulties during the first years and the sense of loss of personal identity. In order to take pictures she asked the housewives of the houses she was cleaning to lend her their clothes and their houses, making the culture and the identity of the others her own.