Kodak Color film that was initially exposed in the summer of 2019. I had it developed for me by an underclassmen (thank you). I was filled with pride to be able to archive my loved ones in film. Some day, I want to show them these images. My grandmothers, however, are a long distance away in El Salvador. I wanted to imagine a gallery space for them and picture them walking through it. In picturing myself with them I wanted to make sure to separate my perspective from theirs. I'm still the one behind the camera.

I made collages with scans of photos my mother took in El Salvador after the 7.6 earthquake of January, 2001. I wanted to highlight the people in the photos rather than the debris. My intention was to mirror the perspective that my mother had during the taking of the pictures; it was personal. I think some people might be wary to treat images of destruction as something that can only exist as itself because of the emotional weight it holds. I'm still trying to figure out what collaging these photos mean to me as an art maker. For now, it's about viewing the photos through intimacy rather than as a spectator two decades later. I hesitated putting direct images of myself into the collages since my place as the first generation born in America inherently distances me from what happened, but I think the quality of the image let me play into the transparent nature of memories. The context of the final image has been changed; the destruction of war is different than that of natural disasters. My mom tells me that people from the country side came to towns to offer help after the earthquake. The soldiers in the image are receiving tomatoes to distribute while these two old men were fixing something up that was left.