Episode 1: Dear Daddy

An elongated landscape A3 sized book with a brown faux leather cover. Inside are forty matt black pages crowded with hundreds of black and white photographs fixed with yellowed sticky tape that has damaged every single one.

When I began to remove all the loose photographs and peek behind the others I discovered images of a young girl all have written letters on the back all in Spanish addressed to “a mi querido papi” [My dear Daddy]. They are signed using a number of different names; Betty, Rosita, Cochinita, Teuchi and Hortensia but the images show the same girl.

The last dated photograph from 1961 identifies a place Penonome - a city in Panama. The letters begin in 1956 and the last one is dated 1961 which reads:

“To my daddy remembered your daughter not be forgotten”

Exhibited at Gertrude Contemporary, Octopus: Lost and Profound, curated by Daniel Mudie Cunningham 2015


Essay by Daniel Mudie Cunningham PDF  ︎︎︎VIEW
Episode 1 Dear Daddy booklet PDF  ︎︎︎VIEW