WWU Instructor Elizabeth Ransom explores immigration through her photography series “Homesick”

Elizabeth Ransom’s newest photography project “Homesick” addresses immigration, womanhood, and the loss, longing, and pathos of homesickness. 

Recently featured in Lenscratch by Galina Kurlat, the series was displayed from November, 2024 to January, 2025 as part of the “Transnational” exhibit at the James Hockey Gallery in Farnham, UK.

“After researching homesickness and speaking with other migrant women I found that homesickness can have somatic, cognitive, and emotional symptoms. These can range from dysphoria to anxiety to insomnia and even result in changes in appetite,” said Ransom, an instructor in Western’s College of Fine and Performing Arts.

Inspired by her own sense of homesickness while living abroad in England in 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, “Homesick” “is about exploring the emotional landscape of migration. It's about looking beyond political rhetoric and instead investigates the everyday lived experience of what it is like to live in a new country,” said Ransom.

Ransom’s creative process is twofold: she surveys women about their comfort drink or soup from home and immerses cannisters of undeveloped film in those chosen liquids for the length of time the women have been absent from their home countries. 

The works have titles that reflect the poignant nature of the project, like “Mint Tea – Lithuania, UK – 404 days” and “Chicken Broth – Mexico, UK – 902 days.” 

Over time, the film develops into abstract forms. Each participant documented their experiences of migration in handwritten letters and each photograph reflects their emotional and physical distance from “home.”

One of the letters is from a migrant from Chile, who writes, “Who would call it 'my land’ when it's been years that I've been without her? I long to breathe the Chilean Air, mountain range in hand…I've underestimated my attachments, my ties, but here they are, waiting to touch the soil. At last.”

To learn more about Elizabeth Ransom’s abstract photography, follow her on Instagram.

To learn more about photography courses at WWU, visit the WWU photography webpage.

Frances Badgett covers communications for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the College of Fine and Performing Arts. Reach out to her with story ideas at badgetf@wwu.edu.