Title of Collection

Hmm…after a falling out with family, I lost access to almost all photos of me to about 22 years old. Its hard to remember how I changed througout the years. Its like a face thats almost there. I only have 5 photos of younger me. All digital, and often times a phone photo of the photo, blurry. Anyway, from one thing to the other I started taking photos of myself to keep my own records and now I have a whole collection.

When a family rupture closed the album on my childhood, I turned the camera toward myself. These small self-portraits are printed at hand scale so you have to lean in—notes I kept while learning how to be present in my own image. Made from the diaspora, between looks, languages, and names, the work treats self-portraiture as self-archiving: a way to keep what wasn’t kept for me. Small on purpose; memory at the distance of a whisper.

One of the few images I have from childhood. Losing access to family photos left gaps I couldn’t fill—so later, I started making my own. Shown beside twenty small self-portraits, this picture holds the origin point: the child I keep looking for in the work.