Jitka Hanzlová has traversed contexts, identities and cultures in a quest for the meaning of belonging that lies at the heart of her images. The photographs in Cotton Rose were taken in the Gifu Prefecture of Japan. Hanzlová strongly resisted the long tradition of travel journals written about Japan, showing a foreign and exotic country. Since Jitka Hanzlová defected from the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia in 1982 she has sought to explore her experiences through photography, producing a body of work at once poetic and truthful. Hanzlová’s photography is in constant pursuit of the relationship between the individual and the context in which people live. It scrutinizes the ways in which home and surroundings indelibly shape identity. Drawing on her own life story, Hanzlová’s photographs also speak of a more universal longing for a sense of place.