Boy in Tree, Lago Enriquillo, Barahona

In this early photograph by groana melendez, an unnamed subject perches, casual yet kingly, in what appears to be a type of ficus tree. The artist has spent nearly twenty years photographing friends and relatives between New York and Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic; she calls this body of images ni aquí, ni allá / neither here nor there. Raised between New York and Santo Domingo, melendez has little sense of her family history beyond her grand-parents’ generation. As such, she considers “home” to be a fragile concept, or perhaps a mobile one.