As immigrants, my parents embraced the American dream. They sought to raise a family through economic opportunity, diligent work ethic, and warmth of community. Throughout my adolescence, a mosaic of visitors crossed thresholds of our home. As a testament to fellowship and enduring hospitality, the stories my mother and father shared about their assimilation into Maryland's Greek community inspired this visual essay.

Amid an era's sociopolitical entanglements and surfeits of broadcasting, there's momentous benefit in reviving mutual roots from a period when forebears sought liberation from oppression in hope for newfound independence, security, peace, prosperity, and permanence-of-place. In collaboration with the Hellenic Heritage Museum's vast collection of historic family items, Diaspora contemplates universal notions of family, memory, and identity. (Continued below…)

By examining unvarnished bygone paraphernalia separated from their customary surroundings, common ground and unblurred truths among ethnicities are brought to the fore. Beginning with the late 19th-century Greek diaspora, such memory-rich vessels represented utility, sentiment, and symbolism for pioneering immigrants' humble new beginnings in the United States. These multifaceted generational objects palpably embody struggle and evolution, sufferance and perseverance, love and loss.

In the spirit of universal ambition for equitable life, connection, and cultural preservation, as a montage-in-motion across borders, these items encapsulate expressions of immortality bestowing interpretive, unifying value in service to posterity. As generations advance and lay roots, what are the cultural archetypes within evolving identities and what do they look like?