Jon Kasbe’s piece “Not at Home,” a multimedia portrayal of a New York family that has relocated to the Galápagos Islands, provides an incredibly intimate insight into a family’s hopes and challenges in a new place. It inverts the typical immigrant story of transitioning from village ways to city life, to gripping effect.
Kasbe shows us the intense vulnerability of a mother and her children displaced (voluntarily on the mother’s part, less so for the kids). She’s in search of a better life for her family, but her doubt and struggle come through in every frame, matched only by her overarching determination to make this choice work.
By quick-cutting video clips from different settings into the introduction, Kasbe piques our curiosity by dropping us into the fabric of their daily lives and the mother’s internal monologue. We get a sense of place from scene-setting footage as well as insight on the family’s new life from interviews and shots of their everyday activities in this exotic setting. Lower thirds accomplish the task of narration without introducing an outsider’s voice to distract from the family’s story. Natural sound of cooking, swimming and a heart-wrenching phone call from home help fill in the picture.
The audio and visuals of the interviews show the trust Kasbe engendered in his subjects, through both the feelings they choose to reveal and the moments he had access to. Iris, the mother, says she is extremely protective, understandable given what she reveals about her past. It speaks volumes about Kasbe’s skill and sensitivity that she not only allows access to these moments with her children, but to her most painful memories and deepest fears, as well.
I was curious about the enormously talented Kasbe, who garnered two honorable mentions in the multimedia feature category of the 2013 National Press Photographers’ Best of Photojournalism Awards. Digging for more information, I found his resumé and discovered that Kasbe filmed this piece in a week while he was still a student of media production at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I expect he’ll be winning a lot more of these awards for whatever media outlet scoops him up.
A. Lee Clark 
Quite an accomplishment for only one week with the family! I’m sure he had previous experience with video storytelling. This is an excellent post. I also like the fast cuts. At the beginning, they glue me to the story. They really hold my interest.