“Photography is always about death,” says Eritrean-born photographer Dawit Petros. He should know. Since 2001, Petros has lost six family members and two friends to old age, ill health and accident. It’s logical, then, that his tender, telling portraits of North American–Eritreans should document and reconstruct family. Petros has lived in Saskatoon, where he settled as a child with his parents and three siblings after fleeing his war-torn country; then in Montreal, where he earned his undergraduate degree; and finally in Boston, where he is pursuing a Master of Fine Arts on a Fulbright Scholarship. It’s an itinerant background that affords him hard-earned insight onto his subjects’ unique experiences of displacement, and the new bonds to land and community that are tentatively taking root.

Re-Mix, an exhibition of work by Dawit Petros, is on display at the Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art as part of the Contact Photography Festival, May 4 to June 10. Artwork $400 to $2,000. 401 Richmond St. W., Ste. 102, 416-591-0357.