With tomorrow set as the end date..

Resident Alien. Part 2.

At the time of making this series (between 2008-2012), my life was under the scrutiny of the US department of homeland security. I was applying for residency to establish a life in the US together with my American wife. Our initial procrastination in getting the green card ball rolling had meant my tourist visa had expired and I had been living without any legal documentation for almost 2 years. It was under these circumstances that we lived, worked and traveled and they were the psychological conditions in which all the photographs, now called, Resident Alien, were made. It was an unsettling time for us newlyweds, we couldn’t really put down any roots, everything was in doubt and we had to be strong and we had to have hope, but I felt somehow like I was living on borrowed time and the game would be up for me any day now. 

So with tomorrow set as the end date, we quickly learned to make the most of today and we began to explore the America that I had recently landed right in the center of, in Kansas, and say yes to everything in the meantime. Many of these early road trips are documented here in this blog and it was the reason why I first set it up, as a travel journal. It was a time of both high anxiety and great adventure and it was full of the first time for things. It was my first time in the USA. It was my first time using a digital camera. It was my first attempt to shoot in colour with any real commitment and they would later be the first images that I uploaded to the internet. It’s also to be noted that all of these first times had their own tree of related first times attached to them. It was an intense initiation into my new “as seen on TV” life in America and I was very much the outsider looking in.