Everyone in me is a bird

A photographic meditation on motherhood, grief, love, loss and nature.

EVERYONE IN ME IS A BIRD

Six years ago, I lost my brother to sudden cardiac death. My world collapsed and changed within a second. From that day on, grief has accompanied me. But when my brother left, he gave me the gift of perceiving life differently. He has taught me to be fearless, and to embrace what is to come. At his funeral, a small robin flew around us. Since then, birds remind me of my brother. A month after his death I found out I was pregnant. My daughter was born with her hair forming a small universe on her forehead.

Transcending between my chosen home-country Argentina and my native Germany, this work undoes distance, freely moving between time, seasons, countries, and space.

As part of a fragile ecosystem, nature becomes the connection. After three early pregnancy losses, the pregnancy of my second child was accompanied by doubt and fear, but I learned to listen to my body and trust that everything was going to be alright. My son was born during a full moon and a thunderstorm, followed by a major flood in Germany. Puerperium comes with immense joy, but also isolation and sadness, feelings that interchange at high-speed. One tries to find a new place in the world, searching to be reborn as well. These images are my journey, while I find step by step back to a new me.

I watch my children growing up, in a world of changing climate, and constant destruction of our planet. My children have awakened the most primitive instincts in me - unconditional love, aggression, the fear of death. Photography is my tool to remember, a sometimes desperate grasp of a fleeting moment. Through my images, I look for the magic in the ordinary, what it means to live, to lose, and most of all, to love.

(*the title is taken from a poem by Melissa Studdard)