On My Way Home · Maryna Levytska

Diptych. Left: a family of four on a rocky summit high above the Yalta coast. Right: a summit cross on a headland above a pale sea in Ireland.

Diptych. Left: a dark timber dacha interior, an open window with a lace curtain onto dense green. Right: park tree trunks glowing orange in low evening sun.

Diptych. Left: the white limestone cliff of the Crimean plateau with forest and sea beyond. Right: grey rocky outcrops and heath hills under a white sky in Ireland.

Diptych. Left: a figure in a red jacket on a stony steppe plateau in Crimea. Right: the Howth cliff walk with the Baily Lighthouse near Dublin.

Diptych. Left: a person lying in a dry meadow before a wall of green trees. Right: a hillside with a wooden viewing platform overlooking a valley.

Diptych. Left: dark seaweed covered rocks at low tide on an Irish winter shore. Right: a Crimean cove with lilac and mint houses stacked on a crag.

Diptych. Left: Yalta hillside houses with balconies and cypresses. Right: an Irish suburb of slate rooftops, telegraph poles, and bare winter trees.

Diptych. Left: a young man in a green windbreaker sitting above the sweep of Yalta and the Black Sea. Right: pale open sea with one tiny fishing boat.

Diptych. Left: an aerial view of a serpentine road winding through coastal scrub to the sea. Right: dark blue dusk mudflats with a winding tidal channel.

Diptych. Left: an oak canopy from below, dark branches against a white sky. Right: bare branches with a few last leaves against a blue grey dusk.

Diptych. Left: a mountain ridge almost dissolved in warm rain haze. Right: a peach sunset over a calm sea, one ship on the horizon.

Diptych. Left: lit windows smeared through dark reflective glass at night. Right: a dusk field with apartment blocks on the horizon, windows lit.

On My Way Home is a series of diptychs in which one image was taken in my homeland, Crimea, before the full-scale invasion, and the other one is a photograph from the different countries I temporarily considered home.

I left my hometown in 2022 due to the Russian full-scale invasion and started looking for a new home. The countries where I moved offered me safety, but none could fulfil my need for belonging. I found myself constantly searching for familiar landscapes: the Crimean mountains, the Black Sea, the pine forests. I was so happy when I noticed similarities in what surrounded me.

The idea for On My Way Home was born from this instinctive search. At first, I intended to capture a series of landscapes that remind me of Ukraine, until one day I realised that the project had already been made, unintentionally. When I looked through my archive, I saw how certain images communicated with one another, through shared patterns, mirrored color palettes, or nearly identical landscapes.

For me, this project became a way to reflect on how longing for what remains in the past shapes our present actions and the way we perceive reality. It is an exploration of home, memory, and our connection to the land.