I’m not here, even not there
In the vast expanse of our world, people establish a unique connection to a place they designate as “home.” Departing from my hometown for the pursuit of educatin in various countries, I’ve revisited both my roots and those new urban landscapes. Yet, the once-familiar locales now lack the intimate resonance of home, casting every corner of those dwellings in an unfamiliar light.
Homes transcend geographical boundaries; they exist ubiquitously. Unveiling the essence of home becomes a profound act, akin to unlocking a door and stepping into an intricate realm of emotions, encapsulating that extraordinary sensation named the feeling of home.
There’s “No Place” Like Home: The Photographs of Farzin Foroutan
By Dr. Staci Gem ScheiwillerAssociate Professor of Modern Art History, California State University, Stanislaus
I’m Not Here, Not Even There (2019) portends contradiction, even negation. If one is neither
here nor there, then where does one stand? Is one so alienated that one becomes invisible, or
does the location itself disappear? “Here” and “There” indicate space and place, but likewise,
these words suggest states of mind that one is mentally present, so if one cannot be psychically
present, then one is also not “here” or “there.” In Farzin Foroutan’s photographic series,
discombobulated juxtapositions between dilapidated, public spaces and sentient persons point to
a liminality of not belonging and an existence of being indefinitely suspended. But the ghostly
spaces that do not quite materialize allude to not just any type of space but intimate ones of
domesticity, which is the domain of privacy, protection, and familial love; thus, the subjects
revealed in the photographs are invariably vulnerable, as there is no shelter to shield them from
the cruelty of the world. They are ultimately exposed in states of undress or intimacy with
nowhere to hide. Furthermore, the magic realist contrasts present in Foroutan’s photographs call
the viewer’s attention to the absurdity of the subjects’ situations, such as shaving or embracing
outdoors, making the viewer aware that these persons are not only disrupted physically and
psychically, but the viewer is also cognizant of a larger concern of displaced persons who
traverse the world yet who rarely find a place to rest and to call “home.”
Although the viewer notes people dwarfed in monumental environments that were once thought
to be magnificent locations but have now decayed, one has to question whether one only sees
and interprets these places through the photographer’s and the subjects’ eyes, meaning that these
sites are psychologically and emotionally portrayed and thus should be framed in this way rather
than ontologically. According to Foroutan, “In every corner of the world, everyone has a place
that they know there as a home. Since eight years ago, I left my hometown to continue my
education in other cities. Now after these years, when I come back to my hometown or other
cities that I was there, I don’t have any sense of intimacy to their places as a home, and I find any
corners of those houses strange.
With most persons who have traveled or lived in other countries, whether by force or by
choice, the return “home” is often anticlimactic and surreal. Sometimes the change is real,
lodged into the environment itself, such as a transformation of culture, the death of a prominent
relative, the end of a political conflict, or a new government. But oftentimes, the change is not
outward but inward. Returning to the dichotomy of neither being here nor there, physically nor
mentally, it could be such that the areas depicted in the photographs have not deteriorated or do
not seem ridiculous, but are actually reflections of these persons’ inner realities as they see and
imagine their own displacements. Through their estrangement and dislocation, no place can feel
like home, seem like home, smell like home, or look like home. No site can really take the stead
of “home,” and yet “home” is an idealistic construct that perhaps never existed in the first place.
There is always a yearning for that which is familiar only to find that as one grows older and
journeys through many spaces, theses yearnings become fantasies.
In one photograph of the series that is both visually stunning and poignant is a reclining couple
centered in a landscape that seems to have been an outdoor pool. The couple appears homeless
with their red bedding spread out onto the concrete, exposed to the elements. Surrounding them
are industrial, semi-circular, tunnel-like blue building materials that might have been part of a
waterslide. These blue pieces, as well as the faded pool tiles, contrast with the brilliant red of the
sheet and woman’s skirt, making the couple look as if they are in a sea of debris, with waves
twisting and turning in space. Moreover, what still looks aesthetically enticing is really a bunch
of abandoned junk, mirroring perhaps the mental and physical dislocation of the couple
themselves, as their bodies curve and contort like the blue slabs of wreckage. Once resplendent
and a place of joy, the pool is now a site of dejection and desertion, echoed by the vacuous gazes
of the couple, who hold each other close yet look in opposite directions. They are a striking
couple on the outside but seem dissatisfied and discontented within.
In another photograph, a man, whose face is covered with shaving cream, stands among the
trees. His stance is rather stiff and angular as he meets the viewer’s gaze head-on. With his curly
dark hair and white foam on his face like a treetop, he almost blends in with the trees as one of
them. One questions why is he standing in what seems like the middle of nowhere, as well as
where did he find a can of shaving cream, where did he toss the can, and where are his street
clothes? The photograph asks more questions than answers them but also encourages multiple
narratives and readings of the image. For example, behind him among the trees is a long expanse
of the sea. Did he come from sea like a twisted Birth of Venus, but instead of the frothing sea
foam circling Venus as she glides onto the shore of Cyprus, the only foam on this man is around
his face? Is his home somewhere beyond the water? Was he suddenly transported through space
and time and then casted away? Since he seems so defenseless by wearing only a bathrobe, his
home must be somewhere else or blown away unless this is a common nightmare, in which
dreamer finds himself nude or semi-nude in wide-open or public spaces. As suggested earlier,
however, maybe he has a home, a physical intimate space, but mentally, as he prepares his
appearance for the external world, he is internally somewhere else, dreaming of the trees and
water and longing for other destinations.
Overall, the magical realist element of placing figures into incompatible landscapes, which shock
the senses, as well as the surrealist element of doubling that recall the phantoms of past glorious
structures that were once livable, force the viewer to consider dislocation and disruption as
perpetual existential conditions of human beings. The viewer is also called to see here/there as
not only spatial but also mental, as all the spaces in question hint to interiority. One expects the
public sphere to be alienating in one form or another—an anonymous metropolis, class divisions,
and migrant populations—but the domestic sphere is expected to be the refuge from the cold,
harsh world outside. Nevertheless, the interiority of the mind itself follows one into those private
spaces so that the estrangement of the outside world infiltrates that of the inside world. Hence, no
space is safe, stable, or comfortable. This is the illusion that this photographic series dispels. I’m
Not Here, Not Even There is ultimately about tensions, which emerge through juxtapositions that
find no easy solution, so that eventually one learns to live daily through mundane actions that
attempt to keep the discontentment at bay. When shaving, embracing, waking, cleaning, or
dressing, one continues to make through the absurdity of the world, to survive, to be human, and
to find an existence in the unacknowledged, netherworld spaces between here and there—to
create a presence when it can feel like there is none.