It is the aura of my fingers that sees the egg

© Ana Maria Sales Prado - Image from the It is the aura of my fingers that sees the egg photography project © Ana Maria Sales Prado - Image from the It is the aura of my fingers that sees the egg photography project © Ana Maria Sales Prado - Image from the It is the aura of my fingers that sees the egg photography project View all images ↓
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Where am I really from? Searching for self-empowerment through representation, I create visual counter-narratives that produce a moment of irritation or even resistance to usual stereotyping imagery in a post-migrant German context.

I begin with an empowering approach and ask myself: where am I really from?

In this work I search for self-empowerment through representation, particularly concerning themes of identity and origin. Through a photographic process closely linked to (visual) research, I explore and reflect on various archives, histories, and documents. The intention is to create counter-narratives that produce a moment of irritation or even resistance to usual stereotyping imagery in a post-migrant German context. There‘s a deliberate omission of nationalities, and (family) narratives are interwoven with elements of fiction.

I reverse the original question, which is directed against supposedly non-German and racialized bodies and which, in its banality, is part of everyday German life. What is relevant here is that I decide when and how to answer the question. The aim of the work is a self-empowering practice of representation, the refusal of complete transparency as well as the production of complexity that allows for different spaces of interpretation and negotiation.

My work reflects decolonial strategies within photographic practice: How can photographic images be conceived to formulate a counter narrative? Can this result in a de-linking of normative, often stereotyping, imagery around thematic complexes such as origin or identity? 

I delve into archives, turn over images, recreate them, and try to make memory visible. My storytelling seeks to disengage from a Western-centric concept of time, breaking free from normative spatial and temporal frameworks. This includes an uncoupling from patriarchal narrative structures, which are dominated by births, marriages or deaths. I‘m interested in the intersections, coincidences, and new contexts that emerge through the stories that lie between the lines. There‘s also an exploration of the repetition of both small and grand narratives, which appear cyclical and fragmented.

The title is a quote from the text "The Egg and The Chicken" (1964) by the author Clarice Lispector. She reflects on the identity of an egg, being abstract, fictional and absurd.

© Ana Maria Sales Prado - Image from the It is the aura of my fingers that sees the egg photography project
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The egg represents a recurring childhood memory at my grandmother's dining table. However, it also symbolically represents a birth or a beginning. At the same time, it alludes to the considerations of the author Clarice Lispector, who philosophizes about the identity of an egg.

© Ana Maria Sales Prado - Image from the It is the aura of my fingers that sees the egg photography project
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The question of origin is tied to a presumed reality and an obsession over a foreign birthplace. I refuse this fixation and choose a multifaceted narrative.

© Ana Maria Sales Prado - Image from the It is the aura of my fingers that sees the egg photography project
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My grandmother collects bees that died on her kitchen window. This memory is very tender and the act of collecting – that I also refer to in my work – is tangible.

© Ana Maria Sales Prado - Image from the It is the aura of my fingers that sees the egg photography project
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I look at analog pictures, hold them in my hands, turn them around. On their back, I find traces: inscriptions, erased words, glue residues and adhesive tapes, tears or years.

© Ana Maria Sales Prado - Image from the It is the aura of my fingers that sees the egg photography project
© Ana Maria Sales Prado - Image from the It is the aura of my fingers that sees the egg photography project
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I cannot relate to accounts of this similarity, as I only know my great-grandmother as an elderly woman. Her hands are much smaller than mine, the skin wrinkled, the fingers thin. I find a picture of her young hands and try to recreate the resemblance photographically. I assume her posture, place my right hand on my left upper arm, and move closer.

© Ana Maria Sales Prado - Image from the It is the aura of my fingers that sees the egg photography project
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The shape of our fingers and fingernails indeed resemble each other. Will my hands look like hers do now in seventy years? Through the photographs, I grasp the past and project myself into the future—the oscillating temporality of photographic images becomes tangible.

© Ana Maria Sales Prado - Image from the It is the aura of my fingers that sees the egg photography project
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My hands are often compared to the hands of my great-grandmother—who is over 100 years old—by other family members because they apparently resemble each other.

© Ana Maria Sales Prado - Image from the It is the aura of my fingers that sees the egg photography project
© Ana Maria Sales Prado - Image from the It is the aura of my fingers that sees the egg photography project
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Photography has the potential to establish new temporal connections. It can link the past and the future together. I aim to find images that repeat across small and large intergenerational narratives, appearing cyclically and fragmentarily.

© Ana Maria Sales Prado - Image from the It is the aura of my fingers that sees the egg photography project
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I am not only interested in the institutionalized description of origin and identity but above all in subjective stories and (memory)objects.

© Ana Maria Sales Prado - Image from the It is the aura of my fingers that sees the egg photography project
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The blending of my biography with abstract memories and fictions aims to shield me from an exoticizing and ethnographic gaze. I deliberately refrain from resolving the question of the truthfulness of photographic images, or the relationships of the people depicted therein.

© Ana Maria Sales Prado - Image from the It is the aura of my fingers that sees the egg photography project
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The blending of my biography with abstract memories and fictions aims to shield me from an exoticizing and ethnographic gaze. I deliberately refrain from resolving the question of the truthfulness of photographic images, or the relationships of the people depicted therein.

© Ana Maria Sales Prado - Image from the It is the aura of my fingers that sees the egg photography project
© Ana Maria Sales Prado - Image from the It is the aura of my fingers that sees the egg photography project
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What aspects do I want to use to describe my identity? How do I deal with the stories of displacement and migration in my family? And how do I address the behaviour of my relatives during National Socialism?

© Ana Maria Sales Prado - Image from the It is the aura of my fingers that sees the egg photography project
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It's not just about moving within existing representations, but also about what a forward movement towards new images and perspectives could look like.

© Ana Maria Sales Prado - Image from the It is the aura of my fingers that sees the egg photography project
© Ana Maria Sales Prado - Image from the It is the aura of my fingers that sees the egg photography project
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By using archival material, there is a risk of reproducing the patterns of a normative narrative. There's also the question of transparency: How much of my family history do I want to reveal?

© Ana Maria Sales Prado - Image from the It is the aura of my fingers that sees the egg photography project
© Ana Maria Sales Prado - Image from the It is the aura of my fingers that sees the egg photography project
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The protagonist wanders through the images, assuming various poses and spaces. This passage, in-between, across binary boundaries, opposes the fixity of colonial categories and representations.