The first chapter presents the works of David Favrod, Kimisa, and Salvatore Vitale. They have in common that they use photography to ask questions about themselves, their cultural and biographical identity, their own past or their relation to history. Their autobiographical approach focuses on their childhood and youth. The photographers seem to travel back into an unconscious past, trying to fill the gaps of their conscious memory with lyrical dreamlike explorations and with narrative imagination.

That night when I was three, mother showed up in the living room. She dropped her suitcases and settled herself on the couch, stretched and scrutinized the rooms that she hasn’t seen for four months. Then her gaze stopped on me. She wanted to see my hands. She looked at them for a short while, kneaded in hers. She asked me, do you want to go and hang out with me? An hour later we were in front of a middle-aged man who greeted us at his door. Mother introduced him as her violin teacher from childhood. From then on, he became my violin teacher.

My mother wasn't part of my childhood memory that much. I had to use those trivial clues, such as the violin, to draw us closer. I learned about her life mostly through the emails between her and her sister.

I lived with her sister for two years during junior high. My aunt would show me mother’s email from her computer, and let me type up my message on another computer. She sent my messages along with her own replies after she revised them.

I remembered my mother’s emails were short, but she always attached many photos of her life in the States.

I built up moments and images of her in my mind to fill the void of her absence. These fragments sometimes were parallel to reality, and other times went off their own way.

For a long time, I practiced with my mother’s violin. She had told me numerous times the story of the night she decided to leave my father: she had the violin in one hand, and held me who was two years old in another, my babysitter followed behind her carrying a small overnight bag only filled with a few pieces of our clothing. “We only had each other under the street light.” This image kept coming back to me, looking for an outlet, propelling me to voice it.

It may seem that I’ve had a wonderful childhood. However, it was vague, it was as stifling as a blown-outbubblegum, moist, cloying and sweet. I was protected by the lies. Mother created the illusion of a superior life that enwrapped me, which provided me multiple dimensions in understanding pain.

After I moved to the United States, I came across the emails that came from my aunt, that pierced my bubbles. It reminded me when I shared the story of mother and the violin on the dinner table at a family gathering, the whole room burst into laughter and told me the truth. She asked in a group of young men to empty the house, as my father hid in a corner speechless.

Kith and Kin is an image-makingprocess of collecting and digging for evidence that allows me to relearn about my childhood, and to discover the truth that had been obscured. It’s also a journey of searching and exploring the relationship between my mother and I. I picked samples from my past, projected on Kira who was about my age at the time, and recreated this tangible and mirage-like journey, of which I am still on .