Piccoli Baci

© Quetzal Maucci - An old birthday card from my father from 2001. It reads: "For my baby with love. Your, Papi. 23.10.01" © Quetzal Maucci - My mother and I when I was a child. © Quetzal Maucci - Image from the Piccoli Baci photography project View all images ↓
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Piccoli Baci is a photographic and mixed-media exploration of my constrained relationship to my father who I did not meet until I was 23 years old. The project combines family photographs, poems, collected keepsakes, intervention photographs, and my own photographs from our first encounter. Through the work, I faced my own suppressed memories in order to unfold complex emotions and explore themes of absence, childhood, fatherlessness, and difficult family dynamics. I tackled feelings of meeting someone who is biologically a part of me, but who I know nothing about.

In western society, we strive for a perfect family image, while subconsciously and consciously editing, deleting, and creating a visual of a family that does not exist. I am curious about the photographs we do not include in our albums. The cast aside, ripped, sealed in a box photographs that are still a part of who we are and yet cannot live in the ideal family album. Within certain societies, the illusion of a “normal family” is perpetuated and defined by a heteronormative, patriarchal structure. These standards are socially constructed and exist because we feed into them. All of this is made to adhere to a representation of a “normal” family, yet there is no normal. We are all part of complicated family dynamics that transform over time. My story is intertwined with the journey of my father and thus I am seeking to explore my relationship to him and dismantle ideology, family, memory, and identity. This is my process of healing.

© Quetzal Maucci - An old birthday card from my father from 2001. It reads: "For my baby with love. Your, Papi. 23.10.01"
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An old birthday card from my father from 2001. It reads: "For my baby with love. Your, Papi. 23.10.01"

© Quetzal Maucci - My mother and I when I was a child.
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My mother and I when I was a child.

© Quetzal Maucci - Image from the Piccoli Baci photography project
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I wonder where you are and what you might be doing. I wonder when the letters started and why they stopped. I wonder how my mother first spoke of you. How did she explain who you are to five-year-old me? Did I understand?

© Quetzal Maucci - Image from the Piccoli Baci photography project
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I have very few photographs from when you and my mother were together. Her memories of you are faint and distant. She used to say my hands are like your hands: long and thin, and fit to play the piano. And when I speak my hands try to speak for me just like yours. Are they like yours? Can I be like you when I did not grow up seeing the way your hands speak for you? Can I be like you when I did not grow up hearing how delicate you are with your words? Can I be like you when I did not grow up learning how tender you are with the world around you?

© Quetzal Maucci - A photograph of my father and my mother when they were in a relationship together and before I was part of my mother's life.
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A photograph of my father and my mother when they were in a relationship together and before I was part of my mother's life.

© Quetzal Maucci - Image from the Piccoli Baci photography project
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Still, you have always been there, in the back of my mind, Suppressed under layers of dust and time. What is a father anyway? I look for you in the faces of others.

© Quetzal Maucci - Two photographs of my father taken by my mother
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Two photographs of my father taken by my mother

© Quetzal Maucci - Image from the Piccoli Baci photography project
© Quetzal Maucci - Image from the Piccoli Baci photography project
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Another old card from my father with a translation from Italian to English. It reads: "Christmas 2004 To my loved Quetzal and her mother, Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to keep my promise to call you guys as frequently as I wanted. My health problems and then my professional issues completely absorbed me even though my heart and my thoughts never forgot you. My sweet baby Quetzal (almost a teenager), your dad is always close to you. I really want to see you and hug you. I hope to see you as soon as possible by coming to San Francisco and staying with you and your mom. I know that you are really good and really, really beautiful. Your dad has resolved his health problems and soon he will be able to resolve even the professional one. I wish you and your mom a serene, tranquil, and happy Christmas and a splendid new year. I will think about you in the Holy Christmas. I LOVE YOU VERY, VERY, VERY MUCH. Papi P.S. A present will follow for my baby"

© Quetzal Maucci - Image from the Piccoli Baci photography project
© Quetzal Maucci - Image from the Piccoli Baci photography project
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It took 24 years to finally meet you. On a summer day, you were waiting for me and my mother at the exit of an airport in Italy. My heart beat loudly. My mother’s heart beat loudly. She was also meeting you after many, many years. When I was a child, I used to wonder what you would think of me if we finally came face to face. I was trying to grasp onto something that didn’t exist. A stability I never knew. Now I wonder if you ever thought about what I would think of you if we finally came face to face. Still, I am afraid of who I will become if I get to know you.

© Quetzal Maucci - Image from the Piccoli Baci photography project
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This Best Western note is the only thing I wrote down when I was meeting my father for the first time. It reads: "Today I met my father after 23 years. I last saw him when I was three or four. I was very emotional when I got to the exit knowing I would see him there and we would finally understand that the other exists. June 8, 2016"

© Quetzal Maucci - The day we finally met, I saw myself in you. That scared me the most.
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The day we finally met, I saw myself in you. That scared me the most.

© Quetzal Maucci - Image from the Piccoli Baci photography project
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It was strange to see you and my mother together. It was strange to be held as if you knew me all along. It was hard to see you cry on the chest of my mother as if you were a child yourself. My tears are fading the more I unfold all of these memories.

© Quetzal Maucci - Image from the Piccoli Baci photography project
© Quetzal Maucci - Maybe one day we will meet again where the earth crumbles into the sea. Where we cannot hide anymore.
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Maybe one day we will meet again where the earth crumbles into the sea. Where we cannot hide anymore.

© Quetzal Maucci - Image from the Piccoli Baci photography project