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BIFA 2025

237 to White City

  • Photographer
    Maria Aleksanyan

This photograph was taken in a split second on a weekday morning, during a school run with my daughter. The bus had just stopped at a red light when the early sun broke through, casting a soft golden glow across the condensation-streaked windows. For a brief moment, the bus transformed - from a crowded commuter space into something still and introspective. The man sat motionless, absorbed in his own world, and the entire scene took on the quiet weight of solitude. I didn’t frame or wait - I just reacted. Sometimes, the city gives you a gift when you’re least expecting it.

As a photographer, I document the everyday routines and textures of British life through the eyes of an outsider turned insider. My work is shaped by the experience of immigration - the act of building a new home, new identity and learning to see the world again through that shift. What began as a personal record of arrival has grown into a broader reflection on rootedness, routine and the slow formation of identity in a place that was once foreign but now feels like home.

BIFA
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