I lived in the house at 720 Vicente López Street from the day I was born until I got married—24 years later. When my children Anna, Juanfa, and Emilio were born, we would go there to visit their grandparents, Nani and Opapa. In the year 2000, Daddy passed away, and Mami remained in that same house until her last days in November 2015. We put the house up for sale, and it had to be emptied. (One must clear things out to build. To remember, we must forget, which is a way of destroying the former memory to rebuild it. By doing so, we revisit it from the present, giving it new meaning. Thus, the reading of that memory changes. We rethink ourselves by reformulating memories, by reviewing them.) As the house was gradually stripped of furniture, decorations, clothes, and papers, I felt the need to photograph those spaces. This book is an intimate diary or an essay on time. It’s the end of one cycle and the beginning of a new one. This is who I am now. This is my exorcism. (Here, memory is linked to a place. The place is the site where memory expresses itself, where it exists. Space and memory are similar, simultaneous constructions. Bachelard says that our soul is a dwelling. In remembering houses, the rooms teach us to dwell within ourselves. The house is our nook in the world. It is our first universe, a true cosmos.)
Author: Evelyn Smink