Hélène’s Portfolio

To me a photograph is a gift of permanence, where the ephemeral stages of life get forever captured, surviving memory and history. I used to shoot everything around me, emulating my heroes at National Geographic, but eventually realized that the only images I came back to, were those that reflected the passing of time, specially mine. Childhood; aging; happiness; birth'; death. I wanted to save my life for eternity. I wanted to exist.

I migrated from Venezuela many years ago, driven away by the collapse of our institutions. Like every migrant, I left everything behind: my family, my friends, my home, who I was and who I was going to be. While at the time, I was filled with the excitement of reinvention, I was too young to understand what I was giving up.

Despite not speaking English and barely knowing anyone, I did well in New York. I made friends, found great jobs, fell in love. However, in my attempt to integrate –and after experiencing a significant degree of discrimination-, I censored my LatinAmerican side. I stoped talking about my home. I stop laughing and hugging the people around me. I avoided speaking up, for fear of being devalued for my accent. Eventually, and after Americanizing myself to the max, I got to believe I had become better than my fellow Venezuelans. I lost who I was, while I never became.

And then, my father died. An existential shark bit a chunk of me so large that my entire self crumbled. I tried to fill this emptiness with other versions of him, like his photos, his drawings, his books. And slowly, almost imperceptibly, my love for my country reemerged. I craved color, mountains and the song of birds. I discovered the beauty of our noise and disorder. I gave myself to the embrace of strangers. Through the search for my father I found my way back home.

As I lay on my bed after an exhausting day, I close my eyes and travel. My body remembers what everything feels like. My fingers untangling his hair. My arms surrounding his huge belly. My hand holding his hand. And I also fly above the Avila Mountain where his ashes rest. I hear the roar of the Angel’s falls. I slide down the Coro sand dunes under the sun. And as I fall asleep, they merge, showing landscapes of love, dreaming of home. The dreams of a migrant.