Verdiana Albano

“In her layered and multidimensional project, Verdiana Albano moves through the remnants of East Germany as if sifting through a family attic—lifting files and photographs, as well as furniture. Her work investigates the architecture of a childhood shaped by a white mother, a Black father, and a system already cracking at its seams. Between the posed and the documentary, she threads her own image alongside institutional archives, reminding us that the personal is always political. What emerges is a quiet insistence that identity is not inherited whole, but assembled piece by piece across time, place, and possibility.”

—Katy Hundertmark,
Independent Judge, PhMuseum Women Photographers Grant

Albano’s I Ain’t From No East Coast explores the dynamics of family, individual identity, and the dreams passed down through generations rooted in labor migration. In her work, she consciously crosses the boundaries between documentation and staging to explore questions of belonging and identity. Drawing on a range of archives, she creates new narratives through the involvement of her brother, as well as through the use of authentic settings from GDR (German Democratic Republic) Daily Life Museums and former state-owned factories.