Gone & Leaving, 2023
Handmade Accordion Artist Book
1125cm x 32cm
Gone & Leaving is a double-sided accordion photobook made during a period of personal transition and emotional instability. The project began as a visual diary, using photography and writing to document moments of change, moving countries, shifting relationships, and the slow process of returning to the self while becoming someone else. Rather than describing a specific place, the work reflects a state of in-between; between staying and leaving, attachment and detachment.
The book brings together photographs, handwritten notes, journal fragments, collage, and found materials. Many images focus on partial bodies, shadows, and reflections, suggesting intimacy alongside distance. Friends, lovers, and familiar spaces appear fragmented, mirroring the way memory and identity blur when something is ending but has not yet fully disappeared.
The physical structure of the book is central to the work. Its accordion format allows the viewer to move through the project in multiple directions, forward on one side and backward on the other. This non-linear navigation reflects how memory operates — folding back on itself — and how identity shifts during periods of transition. 
Imperfect printing and visible textures are intentionally preserved, reinforcing the raw emotional state from which the project emerged.
Gone & Leaving explores how we carry what is lost while continuing to move forward. It reflects on absence, belonging, and transformation, and on how leaving can sometimes feel like returning — not to a place, but to a changed sense of self.
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