Hellen Colman

Serendipity began when a fortuitous encounter set in motion a
journey in search of repressed memories. Writer and photographer met by chance in a bookshop to discover that they had grown up in the same old neighborhood of Montevideo in the late seventies when the country was under the darkest dictatorship.

Coincident and divergent recollections came to light as the conversation progressed. They were then those secondary characters in the life of adults dealing with big problems. Now they want to validate their "unimportant" childhood stories that were born and thrived under the tyranny. Sometimes resonances of that terror made their appearance in their memories and surreptitiously intruded on their child's play.

An haiku comes as a response to a photograph. The image in turn responds to an haiku. Each image is not an actual reenactment of a childhood memory but rather a poetic reconstruction of the lasting feeling. This visit to the past is at times vindication, at times denial and always questioning.

https://www.hellencolman.com