deolinda
Communication Design V Project

To define what a European identity means to me, I looked at my own past. I returned to my grandmother’s house.

“People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don’t know is what what they do does.”
- Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason

I returned 4 years after her death, and all that was left were memories, images. I bring these images as photographic records. I retrieve the memory of the Portuguese and French teacher who marked my childhood, and who introduced to me this idea of Europe through her own life without me realising it. From the letter from a friend from Toulouse to the photographs of Robert Doisneau and the refined taste for art, from the traditional tiles in the kitchen to the poetry notes and extensive bibliography. Notions that ingrained in me, and inevitably became European idiosyncrasies for me. These records show the remnants of a lifetime, one of love, travel and poetry. A European life.