HOME PALACE (Roemenië, 2008-ongoing)

Since the fall of communism Romania has been the source for massive labour emigration. This has been coupled with the rise of a curious phenomenon: the villa as the incarnation of the absent worker. Absurdly large houses, hardly ever used because the owner works full-time in a foreign country, are rising across rural Romania. The elderly, who populate these rural areas together with the children who have been left behind, choose to remain in their old homes. The result: ghost towns of new dwellings. The young Romanian photographer Larisa Sitar recorded these houses in their desolate sadness. Strangely enough, in their miserable circumstances in the West their owners find comfort in being able to afford such a glorified vacation home and the auto that goes with it, she says. These houses function as status symbols and have to compensate for the constant absence of their owners. They serve as guardians for the migrant’s social status in the land he left behind.