In this photo-based project, Tara explores notions of home, culture, identity, and belonging. She examines how e/immigration and nomadism have shaped broader narratives of place, space, and ecological complexity. Through photography (and a collection of interviews), she portrays a rendering of migration, with a particular focus on Thanet and, more specifically, Margate, a place she now calls home. For her, migration raises fundamental questions that go beyond whether certain people should be in a specific location; it probes into the essence of being human and how we define our communities.* It is about the multiple ways belonging and longing are interconnected spatially. She is particularly interested in how people from Thanet perceive shifts within their community and how the land/scape has changed. The land itself carries the memory of migration, shaping individual and collective identities and the challenges of belonging and reconciling different cultural inheritances.
Upon arriving in a new landscape, one’s perspective changes. As one begins to move, the landscape shifts, illustrating that the constant changes in our surroundings reflect shifts within ourselves. As Rebecca Solnit notes, “Walking is how the body measures itself against the earth.” Questions of freedom of movement and belonging, take on new urgency in the context of climate change and the crises of global capitalism. These issues now demand that we confront them with a ‘planetary consciousness.’ As a society, we can no longer accept that the world is divided by those who are ‘inside’ and those who are ‘outside.’ By reimagining our relationship to the natural world, we are urged to take a critical lens to both what we know and how we know what we know. Ecosystems, both human and nonhuman, thrive on diversity and collaboration. Queer ecology recognises this interdependence within ecosystems, highlighting the importance of diverse relationships. In Tara’s work, she explores the connection between people and place, how land and memory intertwine, and how diverse, interdependent relationships foster resilience and growth in communities like Margate.
Tara’s practice embraces collaboration—with people, nature and materiality. She often melds photography with sewing, collage, and, more recently, alternative printing techniques. To reduce her environmental footprint, Tara has begun extracting phenolics from plant materials to print and develop her work rather than relying on traditional chemicals. Reflecting on photography as a medium/ecosystem that balances the technological rationality with the organic and unpredictable — her darkroom becomes a space of alchemy/transition. A queer space. Tara visually explores the use of plants in photography, considering how regional flora, fauna, and funga, shape people and how they shape their own images. These portraits will fade over time, mirroring memories and stories; the land itself carries the memory of migration.
*Kant held that because the Earth is a finite but unbounded sphere with no inherent edges, and all people inhabit its shared/interconnected surface, we belong to a single moral community. As embodied, conscious beings situated in this space and time, our shared condition transcends national borders and grounds a universal humanity.