Head Abroad is a project built to create a space for in-depth analysis of environments and social dynamics. The project offers a new perspective on storytelling, giving rightful and dedicated time and space to stories and protagonists at a slow rate. Details and unique features become the essence of each story. Insightful and introspective analysis come to offer an honest and concrete representation of the realities narrated.
The focus of every story are humans and human nature. With an anthropological eye, Head Abroad offers insights into the beauty and depth of the often overlooked trivial side of common and recurrent experiences of normal people.
The main goal behind this project is to offer thorough and exhaustive work, respect and value every protagonist’s experience, and for their story taken care of. Through slow paced reading and a careful representation of the various scenes, Head Abroad aims at emphasising the human side of writing as well as of life.
Ethnographic journalism and acknowledgment of the journalist
Head Abroad offers a space to discuss those fragments of daily life. It aims at finding the uniqueness within each story, framing the intimate side of personal experiences with which others can relate. Head Abroad uses an ethnographic approach to stories, that involves the journalist’s full immersion into different scenarios. In this way, the project aim at building a wide-ranging profile of those individuals who naturally and organically carry the representation of their ancestors, cultures and traditions through personal experiences. In this way, we try to uncover the subjects’ most authentic and intimate sides. The subjects thus have the chance to open up about private conversations in a non-objective and personal way.
The individuals represented on Head Abroad come from different geographic areas, different economic backgrounds, different sides of society. Their features naturally and harmoniously portray a representation of their own culture to the rest of the world. And through their shared words, they keep their memories and traditions virtually printed and protected.
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Hakim speaks of his city with a spark of pride in his voice, dreaming of seeing his beloved hometown become a popular tourist destination, although its distance from the well-known landmarks of the region makes it difficult for most people to even locate it on a map.
What surely makes Hakim’s view unique is his love for their hometown. In Sharbithat, Hakim doesn’t only see his past and present, but also a future for both him and all the inhabitants of the area.