I left my home in Mexico years ago when drug violence reached unprecedented levels and resettled in Minnesota. The Ache for Home is a meditation on my experience of adapting to a new life and creating a new home. 

Over the last five years, I have photographed recent immigrants to the Twin Cities, primarily from Burma, Bhutan and Somalia; who have been displaced from their homeland by war, violence and famine. 

I often meet my subjects just after they’ve arrived. I establish a relationship with them based on our common experience as foreigners. My portraits capture the ambivalence my subjects feel about being in a new environment that both welcomes them and mistrusts difference, and of making the unfamiliar familiar. 

Over the course of several months, sometimes years, I follow their journey as they adapt to a new context while holding on to their culture. My own process of immigrating to America connects me to my subjects.