Schmetterling Haus is a project intertwines the fabric of insects with the pigment of family history as a way to reimagine the immigration experience.

The butterflies, in which the viewer is invited to follow as I did throughout the making of the project, at times appear playful, vibrant and symbolic of love, fertility and new lives. Other times the insects take on darker forms; alien, veiled and damaged. Throughout the series the butterflies unfurl alongside a series of found photographs and documents in which I gathered through research of family and public archives. 

The first chapter to this series traces my family lineage on my great-grandfather, Sigmund Reiss, who was murdered by the Nazi occupation in 1942.

As with my 2020 photobook, Do Brumbies Dream in Red, this latest work explores other-than-human life as an entry point into complex issues such as notions of legacy, migration and the life and death cycles of those we love. Running parallel to this, Schmetterling Haus draws on methods from the post-photography movement via recontextualising a collection of images and documents gathered through archives. This methodology meditates on both the fragility of life and the torn wings of butterflies.