Rosalba, a counter family album.

A counter-album, where women are at the center of the visual representation, deciding who we are and how we build our relationship with the spiritual and religious world, as opposed to the gaze of a Latin American patriarchal culture.

One day, I came across an old photo album that had belonged to my uncle David, who had been ordained a priest of the Vincentian order. In the album, there was only one photograph where my grandmother appeared; it was a photo with all her siblings, my great-grandfather, and my uncle David in the center, recently ordained as a priest. My grandmother Carmen was standing in the left corner of the frame, cropped in half because the photographer had taken her out of the frame. Along with the photographer's gaze, the family narrative presented the great uncles, men, as examples to follow: the image and representation of the religious being, an exemplary subject. However, women were fundamental in this construction as a way to protect themselves in a patriarchal, unequal, and sexist society or to find their paths of independence and freedom. I decided then to be the photographer of my family and create a new family album, a counter-album, where women are at the center of the visual representation, deciding who we are and how we build our relationship with the spiritual and religious world, as opposed to the gaze of a Latin American patriarchal culture. This project is currently in construction.