Piccoli Baci

Piccoli Baci (Little Kisses) is an exploration of my constrained relationship to my father who I did not meet until I was 23 years old.

Piccoli Baci (Little Kisses) is an exploration of my constrained relationship to my father who I did not meet until I was 23 years old. My story is intertwined not only with the history of my nuclear family, but within the parts that are unseen. This project is seeking to unravel my relationship to my father while exploring ideology, family, memory, and identity.

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 ones we push to the side. The ones hiding in the background. The stories that are never told.

The project combines family photographs, poems, collected keepsakes, intervention photographs, and my own photographs from our first encounter. The project is guided by letters that I wrote directly to my father. Through the work, I face my own suppressed memories in order to unfold complex emotions and explore themes of absence, childhood, fatherlessness, and difficult family dynamics. I tackle feelings of meeting someone who is biologically a part of me, but who I know nothing about.