Turning forty often heralds a deeper period of reflection, prompting questions of origin, belonging, and identity. For internationally acclaimed visual storyteller Jillian Edelstein, this personal turning point marked the inception of an introspective odyssey. What began as a simple inquiry into her ancestral roots evolved into a profound journey spanning continents, decades, and narratives—culminating in her monumental project Here and There. This poignant and thought-provoking body of work transcends individual biography; it echoes the stories of countless displaced souls across history. Melding past and present, Edelstein illuminates how deeply our sense of self is interwoven with the places our ancestors were forced to flee or chose to leave behind.
Unearthing the Past: A Photograph Becomes a Portal
The inception of Here and There, Jillian Edelstein’s masterful and evocative exploration of lineage and displacement, finds its roots in a seemingly ordinary but ultimately revelatory moment during a family reunion in Cape Town in 2002. This event, like a quietly unfolding chapter in a larger narrative, became the ignition point for an expansive journey into identity, intergenerational memory, and the haunting silences of diaspora. Amid familiar faces and generational anecdotes, Edelstein was handed a carefully curated family tree, the labor of love of her father’s cousin, Tony. While others studied the document with passing interest, one name on the chart immediately pulled at Edelstein’s curiosity: Minna. She was the sister of Edelstein’s grandfather, yet her name had vanished from collective recollection, as though time—or intention—had deliberately erased her from the familial tapestry.
Minna’s absence wasn’t just curious—it was jarring. Edelstein had never met her grandparents, both of whom had died before her birth, so to uncover an unknown great-aunt felt like discovering a hidden floor in the house of one's identity. It wasn’t simply a genealogical anomaly. It was a rupture in the narrative that had been passed down, and it opened the floodgates to questions that no one in the room could definitively answer. What happened to Minna? Why was her name never mentioned? Was her exclusion a symptom of conflict, shame, or simple oversight? These questions, gnawing and unresolved, became the early scaffolding for a journey that would grow far beyond one woman’s search for a forgotten ancestor.
From Vintage Image to Emotional Catalyst
The mystery deepened when Edelstein encountered a sepia-toned photograph tucked among the other relics brought to the reunion. It was a striking image of her grandmother Jean’s sisters, Rosie and Raye Levin, posed confidently with their musical instruments as part of Raye Levin’s Original Ladies Dance Orchestra—a jazz ensemble active in 1930s Cape Town. There was a magnetic elegance to their posture, an unapologetic pride in their gaze. Clad in sleeveless dresses with sharply bobbed hair and high-shine shoes, the women radiated a stylish defiance. This image ran counter to Edelstein’s own memories of the same women, whom she recalled as elderly and conservatively dressed—quiet, almost austere in their bearing.
Behind them in the photograph loomed fifteen mounted buck heads, frozen trophies on the wall of what was presumably a colonial-era establishment. The symbolism was stark and unsettling. On one hand, the image celebrated Jewish women's creativity and visibility during an era that offered limited space for either. On the other, it suggested an unspoken negotiation between cultural identities—the collision of an Eastern European Jewish heritage with the often-violent impositions of white colonial Southern Africa. That juxtaposition—a proudly Jewish women’s band beneath emblems of conquest—was both dissonant and revealing. It pointed to a deeper truth that would come to define Here and There: that every migration, voluntary or forced, carries with it a series of compromises, adaptations, and silences.
This singular photograph, rich in tension and narrative possibility, became Edelstein’s emotional catalyst. It was less a family portrait and more a portal—an entryway into an expansive meditation on history, loss, and how visual memory both reveals and conceals. Through it, she recognized that family history is not a fixed script but a mutable manuscript, written and rewritten by those who survive, those who forget, and those who choose to remember.
Decoding the Silences of Ancestry
Minna’s name became the cipher through which Edelstein began decoding her lineage. The omission wasn’t just biographical; it spoke to a more pervasive pattern in diasporic Jewish families—stories lost or willfully hidden due to trauma, shame, migration, or the sheer necessity of survival. The European Jewish diaspora, fractured by war, pogroms, anti-Semitism, and dispersion, often carried with it a profound sense of rupture. Names, places, and even languages fell by the wayside in favor of survival and assimilation. The story of Minna, and the stark absence of her narrative within the Edelstein family, symbolized the broader tendency of displaced communities to abandon parts of their story—sometimes willingly, often not.
This erasure, though painful, served as a compelling invitation. Edelstein resolved not only to find Minna’s descendants but also to unearth the broader context of her family’s departure from Latvia and their reestablishment in South Africa. The journey took her from modern-day Ukraine to the heartlands of Latvia, and eventually to immigrant neighborhoods across Europe. She sought out family archives, tracked down distant cousins, and listened to oral histories that offered fragments of an obscured past. These pieces did not always fit neatly, but collectively they formed a mosaic that reflected the labyrinthine experience of Jewish migration—a mosaic punctuated by exile, renewal, reinvention, and longing.
In her work, Edelstein chose not to romanticize the past. Instead, she addressed its contradictions head-on. Her family’s relocation to South Africa, while a refuge from European persecution, also implicated them in a racially stratified society defined by apartheid and colonialism. This dual legacy—of victimhood and complicity, of refuge and alienation—surfaced repeatedly in her research, adding ethical and philosophical complexity to her exploration. For Edelstein, the act of tracing ancestry was not a nostalgic indulgence but a moral excavation, one that required reckoning with inherited privilege, displacement, and forgotten sorrow.
Inheritance Beyond Bloodlines
As Edelstein delved further into her family’s veiled history, she began to grasp that inheritance isn’t limited to genetics or surnames. It includes beliefs, silences, traumas, and dreams—both spoken and unspoken. Minna’s disappearance from the family record was not an anomaly, but part of a pattern that echoed throughout Edelstein’s broader lineage. Her grandparents had fled violence, resettled in unfamiliar lands, and adapted to survive. But in doing so, they had left behind more than possessions—they left behind pieces of themselves.
This realization brought with it a deeper understanding of how identity is constructed not only through what is preserved but through what is lost or deliberately omitted. Edelstein’s quest for Minna ultimately became a metaphor for her larger search for meaning in the remnants of diasporic memory. In uncovering Minna’s life story and reconnecting with her descendants, she was not simply filling in a historical blank; she was participating in an act of cultural restoration.
This renewed connection to her roots didn’t lead Edelstein to fixed conclusions but to a more nuanced appreciation for ambiguity. The silences in her family’s narrative no longer felt like voids, but like spaces pregnant with meaning—waiting for the kind of listening that comes only with time, intention, and humility. Through her inquiries and connections, she redefined what it means to belong: not as an unbroken lineage or linear history, but as a web of relationships—living and remembered, known and rediscovered.
Family Lines and Forced Journeys: A Global Migration Narrative
The process of tracing one's lineage can unexpectedly entwine personal memory with historical reckoning. For Jillian Edelstein, what began as an effort to uncover the stories of her Jewish-Latvian ancestors soon evolved into an empathetic engagement with global patterns of displacement and survival. Her familial past was not simply a backdrop to history—it was intricately woven into its very fabric. As she unearthed details of her family's forced migration from Eastern Europe in the early 20th century, she found a poignant parallel in the unfolding humanitarian crises of the present day. This convergence of personal and global narratives would shape the emotional and ethical landscape of her project, Here and There.
In 2015, Edelstein traveled to the Greek island of Lesvos, where she witnessed firsthand the arrival of refugees escaping war and persecution from Syria, Afghanistan, and other regions gripped by conflict. Standing on the shoreline, she watched as flimsy, overcrowded dinghies approached the coast. Amid the chaos and exhaustion, one image burned itself into her memory: a little girl in a vivid red coat and beret, soaked to the bone but still clinging to a semblance of dignity. The child's appearance felt eerily familiar, as if resurrected from the sepia tones of an old family photograph. It was in that moment that Edelstein saw her own ancestry mirrored in the lives of these strangers—lives shaped by exile, survival, and an aching search for belonging.
Echoes from Sassmacken: A Legacy of Forced Removal
Edelstein's great-grandparents had once lived in the small Latvian village of Sassmacken, now known as Valdermarpils. In 1915, during the throes of World War I, they were among thousands of Jews who were abruptly and mercilessly expelled from their homes by order of the Russian military command. These acts of state-sponsored displacement were part of a sweeping policy of scapegoating Jewish communities, accusing them of being sympathetic to the enemy. In reality, they were powerless citizens forced to abandon their lives overnight, taking only what they could carry on foot, carts, or rudimentary transport.
This pivotal chapter in Edelstein's ancestry came into sharper focus when she discovered an online memoir written by Samuel Katzen, a boy who had experienced the same expulsion. His diary recounted the surreal terror of that day—the announcement read aloud in the synagogue, the panicked rush to collect belongings, and the hurried burial of household valuables in backyards in hopes of one day returning. Families wrapped their few possessions in sheets and feather beds, stuffing in teapots, undergarments, and precious photographs. In Edelstein’s own family, it was said that a treasured nickel samovar accompanied them on their journey—a symbolic artifact of both home and hope.
Katzen’s detailed and haunting testimony gave Edelstein a framework for understanding not just what had happened, but how it had been felt. His descriptions painted a visceral portrait of upheaval, one that transcended statistics and dates to touch something deeply human. The trauma endured by her ancestors was no longer abstract; it now had weight, texture, and voice. This resonance encouraged her to trace these threads of displacement as they reappeared in today’s crises, forming an intergenerational dialogue between past and present.
Modern Migrations: Lesvos, Calais, and Beyond
Edelstein’s growing understanding of her family’s history instilled in her a deepened sense of moral responsibility to bear witness to current stories of forced migration. Driven by this imperative, she traveled to sites at the epicenter of the modern refugee crisis, including Calais in northern France, the contested territories of the West Bank, and the Italian island outposts of Lampedusa and Linosa. Each location carried with it its own sorrow, tension, and dignity—a geography of impermanence that echoed the landscapes her own ancestors had once traversed under duress.
In Calais, she found herself in “The Jungle,” the now-demolished refugee camp where asylum seekers lived in makeshift huts and tents, awaiting uncertain futures. The conditions were harrowing, but what moved her most were the faces: children with stoic expressions, women clutching faded documents, fathers with calloused hands worn from journeys too long and hopes too fragile. These people were not abstractions or headlines—they were carriers of disrupted stories, stories that echoed those Edelstein had spent years reconstructing within her own lineage.
Similarly, in Lampedusa and Linosa, she encountered the remnants of perilous sea crossings: capsized boats, soaked backpacks, notes written on scraps of paper, plastic water bottles repurposed as flotation devices. Each artifact functioned as a symbol of both desperation and resilience. In some cases, she stumbled upon instructional guides on how to steer the boat—taped inside the vessel, written in languages she could not understand but whose purpose was tragically universal. These discoveries, harrowing in their simplicity, became visual metaphors for the untold knowledge and raw bravery required to survive displacement.
A Universal Narrative of Belonging and Displacement
What Edelstein ultimately recognized through these experiences was the universality of the migration narrative. Whether driven by war, religious persecution, famine, or political turmoil, the fundamental elements remain consistent: the abrupt rupture from homeland, the uncertainty of the journey, and the struggle to reconstitute a sense of identity in unfamiliar soil. Her documentation of these themes did not merely parallel her ancestors’ experiences—it refracted them, creating a kaleidoscope of displacement stories that were at once deeply personal and widely applicable.
Through her travels and encounters, Edelstein reframed her family’s past not as a static chapter but as a dynamic continuum—one that informs and is informed by the ongoing movements of people around the world. Her work dissolves the artificial divide between “then” and “now,” instead presenting a narrative ecosystem in which the echoes of history reverberate through contemporary lives. This perspective allowed her to approach the modern refugee story with both immediacy and humility, recognizing that while the languages, landscapes, and borders may differ, the emotional and existential stakes remain hauntingly the same.
In crafting Here and There, Edelstein did not merely archive images or compile testimonials. She activated memory—both inherited and observed—into a profound statement about human endurance. The bundled belongings, weather-beaten faces, makeshift shelters, and transient shelters she encountered became symbols not of despair but of continuity. These motifs, recurring across time and geography, serve as potent reminders that migration is not an anomaly in human history; it is a fundamental condition of it.
Weaving Personal Memory with Collective Trauma
Jillian Edelstein’s profound commitment to historical remembrance and inherited identity is rooted in the intimate, complex fabric of diasporic memory. Her exploration in Here and There is not simply an act of personal curiosity—it is an emotional excavation, driven by the intergenerational wounds that ripple silently through families shaped by dislocation. Edelstein’s Jewish heritage, particularly the Latvian and Eastern European origins of her grandparents, provided the framework for this introspective journey. They, like countless others, were victims of forced migration, fleeing pogroms, conscription, war, and pervasive persecution. In their quest for safety, they abandoned more than just geography; they forfeited a language, culture, and the right to continuity.
These stories, often spoken of in whispers or concealed behind fragmented memories, form the emotional scaffolding of Here and There. The work does not attempt to sanitize the narrative of exile or frame it as a heroic survival story. Instead, it confronts the reality of rupture—the chasm that opens when a family, a community, or an entire generation is torn from its roots. Edelstein captures these experiences not just through biographical fragments but by carefully contextualizing them within broader, ongoing patterns of displacement. She exposes how trauma, when passed down unacknowledged, mutates into silence, and how silence itself becomes part of what is inherited.
Bearing Witness Across Borders
Edelstein’s journey took her far beyond the family archive. Her project expanded across geographical and emotional borders, morphing into a broader investigation of global dislocation. Her encounters with refugees and displaced people were not observational—they were encounters with mirrors. The Syrian children she met in Lesvos, the Eritrean women in Calais, the Afghan teenagers navigating statelessness in Lampedusa—all bore traces of the same ancestral disruptions that had shaped her own family’s narrative. These faces did not remind her of someone else’s tragedy; they were extensions of her own memory, cast across time and terrain.
Every place Edelstein visited—Lesvos, Calais, the West Bank, Linosa—became more than a location; each became a living symbol of statelessness. The asylum seekers and undocumented migrants she encountered lived in liminal spaces, caught between borders both literal and metaphysical. Their stories echoed the disintegration her grandparents had lived through a century earlier: sudden exile, unpredictable futures, and the emotional toll of unrooting. She did not merely document the external circumstances of their lives; she paid close attention to the residual sorrow that inhabited their expressions, their movements, and their silences.
In doing so, Edelstein brought an intense personal urgency to her exploration. Her work, shaped by empathy and a long internal dialogue with her past, became a vehicle for reclaiming both lost voices and unheard ones. The personal became political. The private became public. And the family story became, unmistakably, a shared human story.
Memory as Resistance and Reclamation
In Here and There, Edelstein refuses to allow inherited trauma to exist in abstraction. She brings specificity and weight to memory, treating each photograph and written reflection as an act of resistance against historical amnesia. This choice is deliberate. In a world where stories of migrants are often reduced to headlines, numbers, or geopolitical debates, Edelstein reintroduces the soul into the narrative. Her images are not composed for aesthetic appeal; they are memorials—layered with generational sorrow, silent strength, and a fierce devotion to truth-telling.
This body of work stands as a quiet act of rebellion against forgetting. Through interviews, visual storytelling, and personal recollection, Edelstein restores visibility to those who have been rendered invisible—by time, by systems, by indifference. Her great-aunt Minna, once erased from the family’s collective memory, becomes a touchstone for an entire exploration of erasure. In tracing her story, Edelstein isn't just restoring a family member to history; she’s building a bridge from one exile to another, from the past to the present, and from silence to articulation.
But the journey doesn’t only aim to recover memory—it seeks to elevate it. In bringing these stories into public consciousness, Edelstein prompts reflection on how personal loss is part of a broader cultural rupture. Diaspora is not merely a matter of physical movement—it is a condition of spiritual disorientation, of cultural fragmentation, of belonging to many places and none simultaneously. Her work insists that remembrance is a moral imperative: to remember is to resist the forces that seek to dehumanize, erase, or commodify human suffering.
Continuity Through Emotional Cartography
Through the layered tapestry of Here and There, Edelstein constructs what might be called an emotional cartography—a map not of cities or territories, but of grief, survival, and kinship. These mapped memories are not constrained by national borders; they are stitched together by human connections that transcend geography and ideology. Her emotional cartography becomes a form of continuity, a way to chart the often unmarked territories left behind by trauma.
Rather than offering closure, Edelstein embraces complexity. She recognizes that generational trauma is not something that simply fades with time—it shapeshifts, it finds new vessels, it demands to be acknowledged. Her approach to memory is holistic: rather than isolating the past from the present, she positions them as dialogues in constant negotiation. She views trauma not as a finite wound, but as a chronic condition of the human experience—especially in a world marked by displacement, exile, and identity loss.
The emotional gravitas of Edelstein’s journey extends beyond her own family or even the Jewish experience. It speaks to all who have inherited the burden of unspoken history. Whether through colonization, forced exile, genocide, or partition, countless communities have lived through similar cycles of loss and adaptation. Edelstein’s work resonates across those boundaries, offering not a universal solution, but a deeply felt solidarity. It asks us to see the humanity in each other’s stories, to recognize the legacies that shape our present, and to hold space for the memories we are still learning how to carry.
From Social Anthropology to Storytelling: A Lifelong Sensitivity to Injustice
For Jillian Edelstein, the seeds of moral awareness were planted early in life. Growing up under the oppressive weight of apartheid-era South Africa, she witnessed firsthand the systemic degradation of human dignity along racial lines. These experiences did not merely influence her outlook—they embedded in her a deep and unrelenting sense of ethical responsibility. Her sensitivity toward marginalized voices took root in a society defined by segregation and injustice, shaping her lifelong pursuit of understanding the human condition beyond superficial observation.
Drawn initially to social work, Edelstein enrolled in a sociology program at the University of Cape Town, where she immersed herself in the study of social anthropology and structural inequality. She was not content to merely absorb theories; she sought to understand how systems of power manipulated culture, identity, and access. Her academic journey was less about memorizing ideologies and more about engaging with the raw, unfiltered realities of community life under apartheid. These were years defined by protest, resistance, and reflection. They fortified her with an intellectual and emotional vocabulary to speak out against oppression—not just through words, but through a compassionate lens on humanity.
As Edelstein deepened her studies, she discovered that anthropology was more than a discipline—it was a framework for listening. It offered her tools to decode the subtle textures of behavior, belief, and survival, especially in communities forced into silence by political regimes. This capacity to observe without judgment, to interpret gestures and environments without erasure, would later become a cornerstone in her method of visual storytelling.
Empathy as Practice: From Academia to Expression
Though trained in academic methodologies, Edelstein’s trajectory veered away from conventional social work. Her yearning to connect with people’s lived experiences took on a new form. Rather than evaluating conditions through clinical lenses or institutional mechanisms, she began to collect testimonies in real-time—voices often omitted from public discourse. The transition was not abrupt; it was organic. Her foundation in anthropology prepared her to approach individuals with genuine presence and non-intrusive curiosity.
This was not a passive observation. It was a dynamic interaction with her environment, shaped by trust, patience, and reciprocal engagement. Edelstein’s ability to decode nuance—gestures, silences, tensions—was a direct inheritance from her studies in cultural anthropology. Her knowledge allowed her to engage ethically, even when entering highly sensitive or politically volatile environments. Whether sitting with displaced families in temporary shelters or navigating communities shaped by generational trauma, her presence was marked by humility and reverence.
Her academic foundation also instilled in her an understanding that identities are fluid and contexts layered. She resisted binary labels like victim or survivor, oppressor or oppressed. Instead, she delved into the grey zones—those murky spaces where stories are not easily categorized, where people are simultaneously vulnerable and resilient, wounded and dignified. This philosophical grounding enriched her approach and gave her work both emotional depth and analytical clarity.
The Moral Imprint of Apartheid: Witnessing and Unlearning
Growing up in South Africa during apartheid meant living within a bifurcated reality—where one’s access to resources, safety, and identity was dictated by race and legislation. Edelstein, as a white South African, had to confront the uncomfortable truth of being afforded privileges in a system built on systemic exploitation. However, rather than internalizing this as guilt, she metabolized it into a drive to amplify the voices of those excluded from the historical record.
Her exposure to the violence of state-sponsored inequality was not limited to overt brutality—it was in the quiet suffering, the daily indignities, the erasure of dreams. These early experiences offered her an unflinching look at how societies justify the dehumanization of their own citizens. It was here that her social consciousness crystalized. She saw that injustice was not just an abstract concept—it was enacted in laws, embedded in infrastructure, and even perpetuated through silence.
Rather than turn away from these revelations, Edelstein leaned into them. She understood that one could not dismantle oppressive narratives from a distance. Her work required proximity—not just physically, but emotionally and intellectually. And it demanded an unwavering ethical compass. She knew that to engage with marginalized individuals without reducing them to symbols or stripping them of agency required a rare discipline of care and integrity.
In this environment, the line between the personal and the political was indistinct. Every subject she encountered, every story she uncovered, reverberated with the echoes of her own reckoning. Her work, therefore, became not only an act of advocacy but a form of self-inquiry—a constant questioning of privilege, power, and purpose.
Narrative as a Tool for Ethical Engagement
What distinguishes Edelstein’s work is not only her ability to tell stories, but the way she listens for them. Her methodology is less about documentation and more about communion. She understands that stories are sacred: they are passed down in fragments, withheld out of fear, or spoken in code. Listening becomes an act of reverence—a willingness to hold another’s truth without attempting to correct, dramatize, or simplify it.
This sensitivity is most evident in the way she interacts with the people whose lives she bears witness to. She does not place them into preconceived narratives, nor does she edit out complexity for the sake of digestibility. Instead, she leans into discomfort, embraces contradictions, and honors uncertainty. Her approach refuses to commodify trauma. Rather, it seeks to dignify the messiness of survival, the stubborn beauty in endurance, and the quiet resistance found in simply continuing.
Her storytelling became an antidote to the erasures of history. In a world inundated with superficial coverage of humanitarian crises, Edelstein chose to slow down, to observe longer, and to engage more deeply. Her work invited viewers not just to see, but to feel—to recognize shared humanity in moments of suffering and strength alike. Through this lens, storytelling becomes an act of restoration. It repairs what history tried to obliterate. It reclaims space for those who have been invisibilized. And perhaps most crucially, it fosters empathy in a world increasingly desensitized to injustice.
Moments of Profound Resonance: Rediscovering Ancestral Ground
Among the most emotionally charged segments of her journey was a visit to her grandfather’s childhood village in modern-day Latvia. Standing amid the overgrown ruins of the Jewish cemetery on the outskirts of Valdermarpils, Edelstein confronted the palpable void left by obliterated communities. Nearby stood the house where her family once lived, a structure now belonging to others—its original history effaced, its meaning transformed.
These moments of reconnection with ancestral geography were often jarring, filled with both reverence and sorrow. They provided not only historical anchoring but also emotional reckoning. Her experience in Latvia mirrored her time spent documenting contested spaces in the West Bank, where displacement remains an ongoing reality. In both places, she grappled with the trauma of stolen homes and the complexities of inherited memory.
Overcoming Obstacles: Emotional and Logistical Trials
The making of Here and There was not without formidable challenges. The project spanned nearly two decades, encompassing numerous international trips, archival research, interviews, and extensive visual documentation. The financial demands of such an undertaking were significant, and Edelstein initially launched a crowdfunding campaign through the platform UnBound. The extended fundraising period tested her endurance, yet allowed the project to evolve organically.
Beyond the logistical strain, the emotional toll was equally profound. Witnessing the despair and resilience of displaced individuals left a lasting impression. She recalls with pain the moment she watched refugees in Lesvos being refused accommodation despite having money to pay. On Linosa, a small Italian island near Tunisia, she found an abandoned boat with handwritten navigation instructions—a tragic symbol of desperation. These moments left scars but also strengthened her commitment to telling stories that matter.
Ancestral Discord and Spiritual Insight: The Sangoma’s Message
In a remarkable twist of fate, Edelstein encountered a spiritual catalyst during her work photographing South African Sangomas in 2002. Monica Mangelengele, a revered healer, informed her that her ancestors were in discord and that a ritual would be necessary for her creative endeavor to succeed. The message struck a chord. Edelstein was aware of familial estrangements and inherited silences, but the notion that these could manifest as spiritual conflict was both surprising and affirming.
The ritual was carried out, and while the book would take many more years to complete, Edelstein came to believe that this time delay allowed the narrative to mature. The expansion of Here and There to include the Ukraine war, the Syrian refugee crisis, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict infused the work with a broader historical resonance. What began as a personal voyage transformed into a kaleidoscopic reflection on human endurance, memory, and survival.
The Meaning of Home: Reimagining a Rootless Concept
As Edelstein traversed lands her ancestors once called home, she was compelled to reconsider the definition of that word. Home, she came to understand, is neither fixed nor easily reclaimed. It is less about architecture and geography and more about spiritual belonging and emotional safety. The structures that once housed our forebears may still stand, but they no longer hold the same meaning—or the same people.
During her research, she came across a stirring passage from Lord Byron’s Don Juan:
“For without hearts there is no home…”
This line captured her evolving understanding. Home is a feeling—carried in stories, photographs, rituals, and relationships. For those exiled by war, persecution, or poverty, home becomes a dreamscape of memory and longing. For Edelstein, it is wherever her story, and the stories of others like her, find resonance.
Looking to the Future: Documenting Cultural Legacy
Having completed Here and There, Edelstein now turns her attention to a long-term project: a feature-length documentary on screenwriter Norman Wexler, whose scripts for films like Serpico and Saturday Night Fever reflected the moral complexities of 1970s America. Wexler’s career, though brilliant, was marred by struggles with bipolar disorder—a theme Edelstein finds deeply compelling. She is determined to capture not only his artistic legacy but also the personal battles that shaped his creativity.
Concurrently, she is working with GOST to finalize Affinities, a book centered on artistic partnerships and cross-disciplinary dialogue. Begun in the 1990s and later revisited, this project features rare portraits of influential cultural figures—many of whom are no longer living. These include Allen Ginsberg, Ruth Rendell, John Le Carré, and Bert Hardy. Through this work, Edelstein continues to reflect on mortality, legacy, and the power of human connection.
Final Reflections:
In Here and There, Jillian Edelstein presents far more than a personal archive—it is an expansive meditation on ancestry, exile, and the perpetual motion of human lives across borders. Her journey began with a family tree and a single mysterious photograph, but it evolved into a sweeping, deeply layered exploration that interlaces memory with migration, identity with impermanence. It is this ability to connect the private with the political, the past with the present, that elevates Edelstein’s work into something enduring and transcendent.
What makes Here and There so profoundly resonant is the way Edelstein invites us to consider our own lineage through her meticulous unraveling of hers. Her work offers a gentle but urgent prompt: what stories have been lost or silenced within our own families? What absences linger unspoken, hidden in old photographs or fragmented memories? In tracing her roots from Latvia to South Africa, from London to Lesvos, she shows how personal history can become a mirror reflecting shared global truths.
Edelstein’s ability to capture displacement—whether through the weathered faces of modern refugees or the ghostly echoes of long-forgotten villages—offers a visual and emotional vocabulary for understanding what it means to be uprooted. She does not simply document suffering; she humanizes it, contextualizes it, and honors its complexity. Her images are not snapshots, but testaments—quiet yet powerful affirmations of endurance, dignity, and identity.
The emotional, spiritual, and creative labor behind Here and There makes it a defining work of personal storytelling in the broader canon of visual history. It reinforces a core truth: migration is not only the movement of people but the migration of memory, language, and soul. Edelstein shows us that our heritage is not fixed in time or place—it is a living, breathing presence that evolves with each generation.
As readers and viewers, we are left with a renewed sensitivity toward the fragility of home and the resilience of those forced to redefine it. In the end, Here and There becomes everyone’s story—a mosaic of loss, recovery, and rediscovery, and a compelling testament to the enduring power of remembrance.
