Ana Janeiro

The Archive is Present is a photographic work developed through a practice-based PhD. The work and research investigate family photographic archives and makes interpretations of them with performance photography. By creating an iconographic index of the photographs in the family albums, certain elements such as pose and gesture are identified, and later performed for the camera.

The photographic albums of two families, my grandparents (my mother and father’s parents), represent a period in Portugal’s history (1940-1975) scarred by one of the longest fascist dictatorships in history. The photographic work focusses specifically on an analysis of photographs in the family albums from both families: the images of my two grandmothers, as representative of two women’s lives during this historical period. Both women lived under the same dictatorial regime, but one living in mainland Portugal and the other in Portuguese overseas territories, India (1951-61) and Mozambique (1962-75). Each album demonstrates specific cultural differences: the specificity of diverse and different cultural images. Ultimately, with the end of the regime, the images are inherited in the identity of women in Portugal to this day, including my own. The work presented is a performative method of interpreting or enacting these archives. The archive is present and alive.

Ana Janeiro