Dijkstra met the subject of what would become her longest-running series to date while making portraits at a refugee centre in Leiden, The Netherlands. Five years old at the time, Almerisa arrived with her family from Bosnia (by way of Austria and Germany) just two weeks earlier…
Taken as a whole, Almerisa documents the transition in a girl’s life, not only showing her adjustment to a new culture, but also the way she tries to find herself by experimenting with different modes of outward appearance. In the most recent image, the young girl from the beginning of the series sits confidently as an adult with her own child on her lap; a boy she has with her husband who’s originally from Surinam. The cycle of life starts all over again.
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