Let me introduce you too"¦
Les presento a"¦
This series of portraits are the result of the lingering power of the image in bringing memories to life. I was working for an NGO (TU, MUJER) in Los Mina, Santo Domingo Este, Dominican Republic; devising a program to help the recipients of remittance to understanding their hard work overseas, thus to avoid that it is wasted in banal issues. While visiting houses for people to talk to them, they always brought a picture of the relative that had left the country. There is one exception to this rule, and is the image of the series untitled: Let me introduce you too My"¦Myself, I returned. Her youngest teenage daughter pass by, pregnant, while on the sofa the child of her oldest is playing; her marriage is broken, and now she have too struggle raising a long family by herself. When I entered her house, I taught the woman in the picture was her younger sister that was in Curacao. I decided to show what I consider the result of migration for many women: broken families, more siblings to take care, resources wasted.
For the series I placed the person holding the picture on front of a blue curtain, to resemblance a studio, but included the surroundings as a metaphor, allegory, of what is left behind, sometimes, what had been acquired from the money send: furniture, a store, emptiness "“like the image of a woman holding a picture of her deceased mother (Let me introduce you to my mother"¦). She was denied a visa for the funeral, and she had not the resources to bring the body back home, thus a lot of sadness, among the thins she mentioned was "who will tend to her grave there?" Or the young girl, that can hardly hold the picture, and hardly knows her mother.
Not all stories are sad, there is a picture of a woman going to meet her husband, hervisa was approved. Her happiness shows, while, the next in line pass quickly by. I decided to end "“for now, because it is an ongoing project- with a picture of myself, holding a picture of my wife; she is overseas continuing her studies in surgery.
First or lst names are omitted for different reasons: sometimes the relative is illegal in the host country; furthermore, the damage done to the family by its breaking part, is beyond personal; the impacct it is felt in society as a whole, becuase the nucleus of it -the family- is incomplete.
This is an ongoing project.
