Home Works

Home Works began when Joakim Eskildsen was just fourteen, photographing the fields, forests, and immediate surroundings of his childhood home. From the outset, it was light, weather, and atmosphere that drew him outside, shaping a visual sensitivity that would define his practice. Years later, after extensive travels and long-term projects documenting communities across Europe, Cuba, and the United States, Eskildsen returned to these intimate spaces with renewed attention.

Beginning in 2005, he turned his lens toward his own family, documenting their lives across seven homes in Denmark, Finland, and Germany, culminating in their current residence outside Berlin. In doing so, he not only captures domestic interiors and seasonal changes but also the growth of his children, the rituals of daily life, and the rhythms of home - transforming ordinary spaces into a layered, poetic narrative of time, memory, and human presence. Each home forms a chapter in an evolving narrative, reflecting both the transience and constancy of life, and the interplay between environment, family, and personal history.

Eskildsen’s approach balances documentary precision with an acute sensitivity to light, color, and composition, evoking a painterly, poetic atmosphere. The project channels his early fascination with natural surroundings into a sustained study of lived space and familial intimacy. Through Home Works, he revisits the foundational elements of his photographic practice - home, environment, and everyday life - now enriched by experience, parenthood, and the unfolding of personal histories.

The series transforms ordinary domestic spaces into visual narratives of memory, care, and continuity, where the familiar is rendered extraordinary through sustained observation and artistic rigor. The images emphasize subtle textures, the quiet passage of time, and the evolving character of each home, highlighting Eskildsen’s ability to make the everyday resonate with universal significance.

Beyond its autobiographical frame, Home Works meditates on time, human existence, and the cycles of life. The images capture ephemeral moments of beauty in mundane rituals, seasonal transitions, and the quiet evolution of a family’s life. Eskildsen explores fundamental questions of presence, connection, and inheritance, rendering the ordinary poetic and existential.

Eskildsen is internationally recognized for his ability to blend documentary rigor with artistic sensibility, a practice informed by early training with Danish court photographer Rigmor Mydtskov and his studies at Aalto University in Helsinki. His work spans decades and continents, including long-term projects capturing the lives of the Roma across Europe in The Roma Journeys (2000-2006), as well as assignments for publications such as The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Time Magazine.

Home Works exemplifies his enduring interest in the intimate, the everyday, and the passage of time, situating the personal, familial narrative within a larger reflection on human life, memory, and the transformative potential of careful observation.

Eskildsen's wider practice can be seen on his website: https://joakimeskildsen.com/