He never talked …

This photobook is my grandfather’s personal diary, I mix the historical files of the Japanese migration to Peru with the photos of my family album, I show the relationship of my grandfather (Sakae Shibayama) and my grandmother (Hatsume Nagaki) next to the historical facts that marked the Japanese migration to Peru. Fiction allows me to fill certain gaps in my memory, and I use photography to visualize these events that have faded over time. So I am beginning to tell my personal story in the light of my family’s history.

He traveled on an island.

The relocation of a part of my family from Japan to Peru (1918) involved a process of transculturation and a reorganization of their identity parameters. The day my paternal grandfather died in 1997, I saw some members of my family tear off from their photo albums, the images in which they appeared, to take them away. The partially empty albums led me to inquire about my origins.

This photobook is a travel book, I scan the backs of the photos of my family album with the idea of ​​building my own maps, making a reference to islands or archipelagos. The relocation is an important moment in the life of Sakae Shibayama and her family because she is going to a place she does not know.

The Shibaymas