Discover (or participate in): ‘Where We Live’, a photographic exploration of student rooms

The green couch, photographs and postcards stuck to the walls, a cluttered pinboard, Peppa Pig plushies, and lots of plants. These might be things that people immediately notice when they first step into my room.

What can all of this tell you about me? And what can your own living space tell others about you? This is the main question of our new photo series ‘Where We Live’.

I am Marlene, a photographer and Creative Media & Game Technologies student based in Enschede. My focus lies in street and documentary photography and I am passionate about photographing people and environments in the mundane and everyday life around us.

Currently, I am an intern at SaxNow and together we want to launch this new project, focusing on documenting Saxion students' living environments through photography.

There are a lot of ways to express ourselves nowadays. One of these things is where we live. How do we decorate our home, why do we choose a certain wall color, put up a poster of our favorite movie, or even pictures of loved ones? A room itself but also a house or apartment can often tell you a lot about who someone is as a person, their interests, passions and aspirations, and how they choose to express themselves in their personal space.

With this photo series, we want to showcase these raw living situations and environments of students.

Through documentary photography, we aim to capture the essence of student life and explore the stories behind the spaces we call home, from cozy dorm rooms to chaotic shared apartments and everything in between. It is all about celebrating diversity and individuality, showing your unique personalities, interests, and cultural backgrounds.

As a start to this series and so you can get to know me better, I photographed myself and my room, giving you a glimpse into my life.

Want to find out more about a certain object or area? Then you can explore the space further by hovering over the hotspots in the images. They might reveal some interesting stories.

For the past 3 years, I have been renting the same room in a student house in Enschede. It is a small room that transformed over time. I always like to say my room transformed just as I did as a person, constantly developing and changing. That is why it also holds old interests and phases of my life.

When I look back in time I remember that in the beginning, it had no personalization, no real individuality. All the furniture was new and there was almost nothing special to look at or decorate with since I just started a new chapter in life, and my room was like a canvas.

Now, I love my room, it is a creative space for me where I can show my personality and style. When I think of it, it portrays me as a person. I love to collect little pieces that I can put on my walls or shelves from everywhere I go, let it be entry tickets, little figurines, or maybe a DVD of a favorite movie I found at the thrift store. This makes my room a personalized space, a collection of myself.