“No one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land – Warsan Shire, “Home”
Micha Serraf is a Zimbabwean photographer based in Cape Town, South Africa. The subtly surreal photographs he makes are shrouded in a nostalgia of personal experience, of what never was, and of what could have been. Caught in an entanglement between ancestral history and utopic optimism, Micha remembers the past by imagining a future, and re-members a future by re-imagining the past:
I imagine, when we arrived, our boats were made of gold. I imagine, when we landed, our parachutes were made of silk and embedded with diamonds. I imagine that once we adopted their ways, we would be seen. I Imagine that once we learned their language, we would be heard. I imagine that once my mother built her home, we would be al- lowed to live among them ... Between the flowers and the stones, my feet, rooted loosely in the ground, can feel the soil. When I close my eyes, I imagine home. I imagine imba yangu.
Through his work, Micha rewrites the trauma of displacement by replenishing it with the imagined memory and fantastical anticipation of celebration, homage, and childlike wonder.
