0
- 0
0
Inspired by the notion of A Thousand Small Stories, the title of Eileen Perrier's current exhibition at Autograph, we invited the public to join the storytelling process by sending us their images and a short text caption considering the diasporic experience.
We received over 600 images and are delighted to share a selection of submissions below, presented alongside contextual information provided by the artists. Strong themes emerged across the submissions, from issues of cultural or ritual tradition to notions of home and belonging.
Works were shortlisted by a panel of judges which included: the artists Eileen Perrier and Dianne Minnicucci, and Autograph’s Learning and Digital Engagement Manager, Livvy Murdoch. Thank you to everyone who took part. You can find out more about Autograph’s open calls here.
In this series, Pattni explores Indian cultural rituals offering protection from the curse of the evil eye and negative energies. These traditions, passed down by the women in her family, have been recreated in a studio setting, to allow for greater privacy and control over the space.
The work aims to highlight the beauty, warmth and diversity of Indian culture; sharing snippets of moments that Pattni considers to be personal and private, and yet still relatable for those within the community.
In the middle of the chaos, discipline stands still. A referee steps between two young fighters, her presence cutting through the blur of punches and adrenaline.
Shot at the Hraouiyine Youth Center in Casablanca. The blurred motion and intense expressions capture the raw energy, discipline, and fleeting innocence of youth boxing in a working-class Moroccan neighbourhood.
I took this self-portrait the day I received my political refugee status in France. It was a moment filled with silence. I had escaped from Iran, I was free but I was also lost. In that in-between space, I turned the camera on myself, to witness who I was becoming.
Through portraits, landscapes, and fragments of daily life, this project explores how we attempt to recreate a sense of home. A drawing, a childhood photo, a cigarette from our home country all act as bridges to our past lives, keeping us connected to our roots while giving us strength to rebuild. The places we live now, whether an apartment or a city that still feels unfamiliar, become sites of both longing and adaptation.
This project is about those whose identity was shaped at a cultural crossroads: one parent from the Baltics, the other from a different language or land. Each portrait carries a band, stitched using a traditional Baltic pattern which gradually fades into the fabric. This is not a story of outsiders, it is a story of us.
In a room far from the land we once called home, laughter still tastes the same. We eat together like we used to, on the floor, hands first. Diaspora is not distance, it's the shape love takes when it travels. The food, the stories, the rhythm of us – carried across oceans, rooted in memory.
This image shows my mother’s Ghanaian passport, used to enter Germany in 1989. For decades, it was gone, until a German authority returned it without comment. Perforated numbers, stamps, colonial languages: traces of state control etched into our family history. The objects' parallax structures entangle control and origin, silence and visibility. Identity is not archived here, it moves, caught between loss, resistance and transformation.
From my series Brewed Reflections: The Poetry of Ataya, this photo reflects on the balance between past and future. My uncle (pictured seated), who taught me the Ataya tea ritual, represents the wisdom passed through generations. The flower-masked figure stands for the youth: growing, changing, yet rooted. It shows how small traditions like tea-making keep us connected across time.
“My Babaji still buys his palak (spinach) from the Pakistani grocers, where the air smells of home and the shopkeeper knows his name. But he also loves the comfort of a big Tesco, where the aisles are wide and the fruit always looks perfect.”
This series focuses on Majeed’s grandfather, Ghulam Abbas - known to her as Babaji - a Pakistani man who migrated to Britain in 1962. His temporary plan soon became permanent, and over sixty years later, his life is firmly rooted in East London. Now 85, his identity reflects a delicate balance between cultural preservation and adaptation.
In this corner of KwaMashu, laughter stretches across generations. Pictured here with local rap artist Nangu Envy, these children, bold and full of energy, remind me that diasporic identity isn’t only about movement abroad, but about the stories we nurture at home. Here, we hold space for play, community and the kind of resilience that lives in every grin. It’s in these moments, unpolished and unposed, that the small stories rise and speak the loudest.
Two boys born in the United Kingdom, from Nigeria’s Igbo tribe. I call them "my boys": I was privileged to know them from birth and feel a deep sense of uncle-ness responsibility.
Here, on a Sunday, they’re dressed in traditional outfits. I wonder about their experience: do they feel a sense of belonging to their tribe and culture at this young age, and how will that sense of belonging be influenced as they become more independent?
This photo, taken during the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee weekend, shows our church's older women celebrating Queen Elizabeth II’s long reign. They'd brought a life-size cutout of the Queen to the carpark.
I soon realised these women, all migrants here for over 40 to 60 years, would have lived through so much of her time. I felt a deep appreciation for their long-lived memories and the stories embedded in their diasporic experiences. It was a powerful moment, witnessing their shared history and resilience.
This image was taken during a shoot for a small project that I worked on together with stylist Nicole Vernon. Invasion of Privacy sought to capture images of young Londoners in their bedrooms. I still love this image, capturing a genuine and spontaneous moment of play during a visit to a family home in Harrow.
Along the Lubilanji river, we find women stone breakers engaged in the hard labour of breaking large stones into small pieces to sell in order to provide for their families. Mamu is an honorific title in the Tshiluba language of Kasai, given to an elder, a female parent or somebody of great importance.
It was my first time in Lomé (Togo), where my dad is from, and I followed him for the duration of the trip. En route to the family house, my dad met a long-time friend. I didn’t want to interrupt their conversation, so while I was waiting for him, I took a series of photos.
Every Christmas, we dressed like royalty, even if the day began with pounding beans at dawn. Her red dress outshone the dust around her, a quiet reminder that joy and duty often arrive hand in hand.
When his mother passed away, Kiami made a choice that changed the course of his life. At 24, he left Angola for Portugal in search of new opportunities. Today, he lives and works in Lisbon, as Angola prepares to mark 50 years of independence from Portuguese colonial rule this November.
This portrait is part of my ongoing long-term project, AFROPOLITANA, which documents Afro-descendant identities in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area.
Homecoming, a project in collaboration with Sophie Walker and Erica Korner, is a visual love letter to Hong Kong Chinese diasporic memory, an ode to the textures, rituals and inherited objects that shape our sense of belonging. Shot in shared spaces, it explores how 'home' lives in feeling, not just place.
Rooms become museums: calligraphy scrolls, dusty calendars, outdated lunar new year’s decor that measure a different kind of time. It's a living archive of who we are, and who we’re trying not to lose.
These passport-style images capture my grandfather’s journey and evolving identity across different countries and decades. Born into the Indian diaspora in Kenya, his life reflects displacement, resilience, and transformation amid colonial histories and migration.
These formal images become intimate, political markers of systemic challenges and hope. The final photo, taken by me, closes the series and invites reflection on migration as movement through time, culture and emotion.
Created to celebrate Korité, or Eid El-Fitr in Senegal, this image explores the question of maintaining one's identity in the context of immigration. I shot my cousins on this day to show the power of familial ties in this celebration and the maintenance of tradition within the contemporary Senegalese diasporic experience.
An image representative of the Igbo Goddess of Fertility, who is called by many names; ‘Ala’ was chosen for this project. The image is of a young woman on a horse, depicting a scene that people of all diasporic identities may be able to relate with regardless of where they are.
Bollyqueer captures Vinay Jobanputra for Threads of Resistance, a multimedia project made in collaboration with fellow South Asian LGBTQ+ individuals to help remove the stigma around our existence and self-expression.
As marginalised people, societal norms often confine us; my project seeks to deconstruct these constraints, aiming to challenge conventional paradigms. Through photography and traditional fashion, I endeavoured to empower participants to reclaim their narratives and celebrate the richness of our intersecting identities.
The image on the left depicts my father and his brothers in front of the wall to their childhood home at Mbuji-Mayi, Congo. The image on the right is a portrait of my father during a return trip after a 46 year absence.
This 1932 passport page contains the only photo that my grandad has of his mother, Alice, which he keeps in a small red box of personal belongings. Alice emigrated from India to East London with her husband, Frank - an Irish soldier - and their first son, Patrick (photographed). Alice tragically died at the age of 46 from interventions following mental illness but the family remained in London, where my grandad resides to this day.
This photograph represents a step down memory lane; here I take time to remember the beautiful vivid memories of my childhood and the beauty of how our identities came to be. Appreciating the warm embrace nature gave us, it was a home, a place that understood our thoughts and moulded us into who we are in the present.
This image gallery is a result of our Call for Photographs: Your Small Stories – Diasporic Experiences.
This Call for Photographs was programmed to coincide with the exhibitions Eileen Perrier: A Thousand Small Stories and Dianne Minnicucci: Belonging and Beyond. A Thousand Small Stories is supported by Cockayne Grants for the Arts, a Donor Advised Fund, held at The Prism Charitable Trust. Belonging and Beyond is supported by Freelands Foundation and delivered in partnership with The Photographers' Gallery and Thomas Tallis School.
All images © and courtesy the artists.
Banner image: Shizza Majeed, A Familiar Taste [detail], from the series Babaji's Britain, 2025. © and courtesy the artist.
Join our newsletter and get the latest on Autograph’s exhibitions, events, open calls, digital content, books, prints and fundraising. Find out more.
Autograph is a space to see things differently. Since 1988, we have championed photography that explores issues of race, identity, representation, human rights and social justice, sharing how photographs reflect lived experiences and shape our understanding of ourselves and others.
Support our work
