While going through my family archive, I discovered photographs from my grandmother’s youth. I was struck by how many lives she seemed to have lived,stories and experiences I had never known about. In those images, she looked genuinely happy, a feeling that had faded in recent years.
This discovery led me to create a photographic project accompanied by interviews with her, as a way to better understand her life and childhood. She belongs to a generation where speaking about emotions was uncommon, yet as she shared her story,both the joyful and the painful moments,I began to realize how much unresolved trauma she carried.
This project became more than a personal exploration. It turned into a way not only for me to understand her and her behavior more deeply, but also to offer her a sense of closure, an opportunity to feel seen and heard, perhaps for the first time in her life.