si je meurs / if I die

An extended portrait, the photographs of si je meurs /if I die explore the fragile space between absence and presence, and continue the conversation I’ve had with my mother, Janine Janowski, and my family and communities, through my work, over 30 years. Moving through a subjective, diasporic field, infused with a sense memory of loss, the photos evolved naturally as we confronted the most human of destinies. --As if I could ever get used to it --As if the picture would somehow wish it away… In the process, I discover, examine and reconfigure an archive, paying homage to our relationship, constructing my own sense of identity and alluding to the legacy that she left behind. A survivor of the Holocaust by hiding together with her immediate family in the Auvergne region of France, Janine went to El Salvador in 1958 to work as the teacher of the French Consul's children. A few years later, she married Antonio Hasbun Z., a Palestinian/Salvadoran dentist and a photographer, making El Salvador her new home. With these photographs, I share my intimate perspective to the historically-significant, public narrative of Janine’s life as a cultural promoter and founder of the renowned galería el laberinto in El Salvador during the civil war and its aftermath, now reactivated through laberinto projects, a socially engaged, arts, education and cultural legacy platform, also inspired by her.