Ojalá nos encontremos en el mar

In the year following Hurricane María, approximately 279 suicides were recorded in Puerto Rico. On July 11, 2018, just two months before the first anniversary of the hurricane, my father died by suicide. Later that year, after receiving the objects he left behind, I photographed each of them and began looking for vestiges of him around the island hoping to find clues as to how to deal with grief amid disaster.

'Ojalá nos encontremos en el mar' (Hopefully We'll Meet at Sea) is a photographic documentation of the psychological undercurrents of trauma that provoke suicides in the aftermath of Hurricane María. It looks closely at my own depression and the challenging emotions of grieving in barren, ravaged, sometimes unrecognizable environments. Landscapes tracing the collective traumatic memory of unprecedented disaster and the nostalgia of the places we once inhabited.