Eva Zielinski (b. 1990) grew up in Michigan, United States and currently lives and works in Detroit, Michigan. She received her BFA in graphic design from Wayne State University in 2013. After University she became increasingly interested in photography and culture, especially that of Eastern Europeans. Her life as a second generation Polish American with lack of connection to her Polish heritage and existing family members lead her to take her first trip to Poland. This trip would produce her first photographic series, W Polsce (In Poland). She is currently working on her second series entitled Stranger Than Fiction. Her photographic work serves as documentation of the human condition and the strangeness of reality, as well as a means of gaining and sharing information about herself and the world.
W Polsce (In Poland)
For her series W Polsce (In Poland), Eva spent two months in Poland for the first time as an adult, traveling from east to west. Her Polish born parents left the country in the 1980’s during the period of Soviet communist dominance—her mother fleeing to a refugee camp in Italy and her father to Austria. They received Visa’s and met each other in the United States—Detroit, Michigan. During her pilgrimage she met family members she had only seen in pictures and relearned how to speak, read and write her first language.
This body of work shows her point of view as a second generation Polish American with feelings of dichotomous identification and the search for her ‘roots’.
To View more of Eva’s work, please visit her website.