Home is a place that is familiar, loving and full of vulnerability. There are traumas, and there are celebrations. Sometimes, home is a structure, providing shelter from the world and all it has to offer. Sometimes it is people, a chosen or given family, that makes one feel safe and comforted. Most of all home is complex. One can have a house without a home and a home without a house. These 11 stories represent a small cross-section of Cleveland. Together we reflect, “what does it mean to come home?”

The poem framing the collective portraits are descriptions of home by interviewees and other neighbors in the development of this project.

This project could not be possible without the amazing community members, neighbors and support of The Cleveland Foundation. Photographs by Amber N. Ford. Storytelling by Shelli Reeves. Exhibition & book design by Leila Khoury