Polish photographer Ewelina Bialoszewska has designed an innovative family photo album called "Growing Album" that allows her to literally plant her Polish roots wherever she travels. The unique publication contains seeds embedded within handmade paper, enabling the book to grow into plants when placed in soil, creating a living connection to her homeland.
Bialoszewska first discovered photography at age twelve when her family moved from the Polish town of Lubań to Munich, Germany. "In these early years, it was hard for me to make new friends, go to school, and create a place where I felt safe without knowing the language," the photographer explains. "But this was the moment I discovered photography. I realized that a camera and taking pictures could be a way to integrate myself in this new country."
Throughout her studies at university in Munich and her subsequent career, Bialoszewska has focused on themes of identity, memories, roots, and belonging. "Photography is not only an artistic medium for me but also a tool to explore, question, and visualize belonging," she shares. "I try to balance documentation and personal reflection in this work." Her practice centers around portraiture and documenting people and places that hold personal significance.
This artistic exploration led to her ongoing documentary series "Motherland," where she regularly returns to Poland to photograph family and friends who still live there. The series captures quiet impressions of the landscapes she grew up with – "the rhubarb, the tomatoes, all the things that are quiet echoes of memory," she describes. "Through these images, I tried to capture not only memories, but also the emotions, atmospheres, and fragments of everyday life that continue to connect me to my roots."
The "Growing Album" project represents a revolutionary reimagining of the traditional family album. While selecting meaningful images of people, places, and plants for the photobook, Bialoszewska also sourced seeds that resonated with each memory. She created the paper by hand using old maps of her hometown Lubań and carefully archived newspaper clippings collected by her grandmother, forming new sheets with these historical materials.
The technical process involves embedding regional Polish seeds into the paper's grain while it's still damp. Once the paper reaches a half-dry state, Bialoszewska begins the photo transfer process. "I chose this technique intentionally: it securely locks the seeds between the paper and the transfer layer, allowing them to remain intact, while still offering the possibility for the seeds to germinate from the back," she explains.
The resulting images appear with a soft, textured, and painterly quality that mirrors the ephemeral nature of memories themselves. The book is bound together with garden cord from her grandmother, creating a photographic vessel that appears both alive and tender. The publication will grow differently depending on the soil it encounters in foreign locations.
"This serves as a quiet reminder, in physical form, that home doesn't always have to be a fixed place but rather a space that we continuously recreate, depending on where we are at any given moment," Bialoszewska concludes. The project represents a profound meditation on migration, memory, and the ways we carry our heritage with us as we move through the world, transforming the concept of roots from metaphor to literal reality.
