What We Leave, What We Keep, 2025 by Cj Calica
I photograph people in the spaces where they feel most like themselves like their bedrooms, studios, living rooms, anywhere they call home. These spaces tell stories. They hold the messiness, the comfort, the quiet moments that often go unnoticed but mean everything.
Growing up, my room was my sanctuary. It was the one place I felt grounded. But after moving during high school and again in college, that sense of home started shifting, from my childhood bedroom to a dorm room, to a small apartment in Koreatown. And when the Eaton and Palisades fires hit, it made me think deeply about how fragile and important these spaces are. I realized how easy it is to take them for granted.
This project is about honoring those personal spaces and the people in them and just as they are right now. I use a Sony A7iii with a Sigma 24-70mm lens and a Flashpoint eVOLV 200 Pro flash, keeping lighting true to how my subjects actually live in their spaces. I want these images to serve as a time capsule, a way of holding onto something we’re always growing out of. Because we don’t live very long, and our spaces change, but in them, we find pieces of ourselves.
Opening Night
Exhibtion Photos by Miranda Aquino