A Tree Is a Tree

Photography, Memory and Afrodiasporic Identities in the Context of Postmigration

Postdoctoral research project, 2024–2026

What do we remember through family photographs—and what do we pass on when we share them?

A Tree Is a Tree explores personal photographs and family memory among Afrodescendant people living in Portugal. Through interviews and conversations around images, I examine how photographs connect experiences of migration, belonging and everyday life between generations. A picture may prompt a story that reaches far beyond what it shows. Other memories have no photographic record, yet remain vivid through repeated telling.

The research considers these private histories within Portugal’s colonial and postcolonial relationships with African countries, while attending to the different experiences and perspectives of participants. It asks how family photographs contribute to an understanding of Afrodiasporic lives that is often missing from public representations.

Developed through the Integral Human Development postdoctoral fellowship at Universidade Católica Portuguesa, the project brings together visual analysis, conversations and artistic practice. Researcher profile: https://cados.ucp.pt/node/9666. See below the artistic follow-up project Walking on Clouds in development:

Walking on Clouds

Photomontage and Afrodiasporic Memory in Portugal

Artistic follow-up project in development

Walking on Clouds develops this research through collaborative photomontage. Participants are invited to share photographs and associated memories, which become starting points for new works. I am interested in how the scenes evoked by their stories can enter these images—including experiences for which no photograph exists.

The title suggests movement without firm ground. Family photographs offer something to hold onto, but their meanings can shift, and the histories they carry are often incomplete. Clouds evoke memories that become visible, change form or remain partly obscured. Walking on them brings uncertainty together with imagination: how do we find our bearings through the images and stories we inherit?

The project builds on my earlier work You and We (2014), in which I used family photographs to create photomontages from my mother’s accounts of migrating from Ghana to Germany. Walking on Clouds extends this approach through encounters with participants in Portugal. A series of photographic prints, public conversations and an accompanying essay are planned.