By Jacinta Bujanda-Suárez (she/her),

20,

New York City-based studying in Barcelona, Spain

Through the years, I have increasingly become more and more fascinated with the concept of cultural identity, given that my own half-Mexican, half-Spanish multi-cultural background and being raised in a place as diverse as New York. The process of assimilation as opposed to holding on to one's heritage through the passage of time and generations also caught my attention, as did the patterns with regards to how race, ethnicity, economic status, and reason for migration affected these processes. For this reason, I began to work on a photographic project that served as an outlet for the exploration of my own identity as a multicultural person through the experiences of others with backgrounds similar to mine. In this eight-part photo series, I documented individuals who also shared multicultural backgrounds. I wanted to capture both the tangible and intangible aspects that form one's identity, and so I photographed each person in a place that made them feel connected to their culture, as well as photographing an object that inspired the same sentiment. The photographs were then presented in pairs, the material and impalpable juxtaposed with each other. Ultimately, "Heritage" is an exploration into the ways spaces and objects play a role in the development of identity from a multi-cultural perspective.