Using photography, film and sound, I try to understand the link between identity, land, home and memory. My interest lies in the intersections of these mediums and how they work together to create an experiential memory-scape of place. My current project My Mother Speaks of Land as Memory was born through loss—lost land, lost identity, and the loss of past and future selves of my father, my mother, and me.
The images serve as a living archive of my family and their history. After my father died, I realized I had never taken a single photo of him, and this hung heavy on my conscience. It led me to a questioning of ownership, legacy, and identity. Who gets to have an archive? How does one create an archive after so many missed years? How does one make a person-less portrait?
I always came back to land. I personified my father within the Texas landscape. While searching for him in this arid earth, I found my mother—an immigrant by way of Puerto Rico who, after my father’s death felt unmoored in this vast sea of desert. Through my father and I, she became embedded in this foreign landscape, losing ties to her own history and grasping at the loose ends of her identity.
— Ariana Gomez, a winner of the LensCulture Emerging Talent Awards 2024. Discover all 25 emerging talents here!
