This series of photos was born from a deep need to know more about my parents. I wanted to understand them not as I got to know them, but as they were before I arrived, as the young couple they once were. Although the story I came up with is neither factual nor real, it responds to that natural instinct we all have to understand the unknown through storytelling. I recreated a photo fiction, building characters and imaginative moments from the empty gaps left after recalling vague memories, few stories, and assumptions.
One always returns to where
one was once happy
Something that always caught my attention when looking at my parents' old photos was the number of them as a young couple in La Punta. This place is right next to Lima and faces the Pacific Ocean. It has a very unique kind of beach: it has pebbles instead of sand, and the water is really cold. It is also rich in Republican Peruvian history but, more importantly, it encapsulates the story of the family I came from.
I remember my mother always liking to go there. She never mentioned why. I assumed it was her favorite place, but I never bothered to ask why. Now, some decades later, my curiosity took me there because I wanted to understand how it could have been being them at that time. But more deeply, there is an eagerness to find out more about myself through their story.
The only clues I had were that they loved each other from a very young age and, based on what I saw, they were able to complement each other. I tend to romanticize them as a young couple full of dreams, goals, and challenges, but reality might be that they also enjoyed the sun, fresh breeze, ice cream, and a certain warm peace that this place brings at the end of the day.
How do you describe that moment when you finally begin to understand with your heart and no longer with your brain?
My delayed closure made me finally understand what was inside them that made them go back again and again: one always returns to the place where they were once happy, not because they miss the place, but because they miss that time with the person next to them.
Looking back on this trip, I can tell that I went to their favorite town hoping to find an imaginary story to fill the gaps of the emptiness I was left with. Somehow, what I was really doing was looking for them to finally let them go.
