Artist Ellen Jantzen is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this photo essay . From the project ‘Mid + West’. To see Ellen’s body of work, click on any photograph.

(A visual essay on adaptation and acceptance in relocation/immigration and migration)

Some say we are all immigrants but many indigenous people have lived in one location for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. In this series I am addressing the more recent acts of relocation.

The place of one’s birth greatly influences who they are but through moving, new foods, cultures, languages and landscapes await to reshape their very being.

I was born in the Midwest, but now reside in New Mexico. Even though I didn’t really encounter a great deal of differences in people there were subtle language differences, definitely food differences and some culture shifts that required adjustment on my part. The most profound change for me was the landscape.

Here I am blending photos from my years in the Midwest (mainly rural Missouri and Illinois) with current photos I’ve taken while living in New Mexico.

I feel that one’s landscape, whether rural, suburban or urban, can utterly reshape them and how through relocation they grow and flourish. They become, in essence, a blending of all former homelands with the present.