Dom Dziecka.

The house starves when you are away

(Poland 2008)

Dom Dziecka is a series of photographs taken in 2008 in eleven orphanages, Dom Dziecka [children’s home], in Poland. The work exposes the living conditions of children who don’t grow up in a family home but in a foster institution.
When looking at the hundreds of photos from which the pictures of Dom Dziecka were chosen, some unexpected discoveries were made: during the day the children are hardly ever alone; physical relations between the children, even adolescent boys and girls, often are very close, without being sexual in character – common feelings of shyness related to the adolescent’s gender seem to be absent; the individual children seem to merge into a collective body, from which they withdraw only when regressing into sleep; the conventional family unit is turned into a children’s society in which typical family relations are not only substituted but actually displaced to form a new and specific social body.
Where the family home is missing something else has developed. One boy, Dawid Redes from Dom Dziecka w Kisielanach, said it’s not a Children’s Home, it’s home.

Ahlam Shibli would like to thank all the individuals and institutions that helped to make this work possible. A very special word of gratitude and appreciation is due to everyone who allowed their photograph to be taken and published.