The Portraits of My Ancestors That Whisper Stories

The girl who slept among her ancestors

In the old family house where I spent my childhood vacations, I was the only granddaughter in a home full of boys. So they placed me in a narrow hallway with three doors and a little divan where I slept, surrounded by my ancestors. On the only available wall hung a gallery of sepia and black-and-white photographs: my great-grandparents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and their families.

Each night, when my mother closed the doors from the outside, I would be left in the dark in that tiny cubicle. The light slipping under one of the doors slowly illuminated each of those figures, who seemed to come to life and step out of their frames. I tried to imagine the lives they had lived. A great-grandfather with a long white beard, stern women dressed in black, children and babies who, by then, had already died of old age. I fell asleep lulled by the waves of distant islands, the songs of unfamiliar birds, and the aromas of faraway kitchens.

For years, I created a life for each of them, pieced together from the stories and anecdotes shared around the big dining table—blended, of course, with my wild imagination as a child cloaked in darkness. My aunt used to say that my great-great-grandfather Adolphe, the first in the photography dynasty, had been a chamberlain at the court in Paris. But my older brother insisted that was just a fancy title they gave to the court jester.

The beginnings in Europe

The French Revolution erupted in 1789, and Adolphe lived from 1801 to 1864. His son, Henri Louis Duperly—my great-grandfather—was born in 1841 and died in 1907. It was a terrible time to be a nobleman; many were simply beheaded. So it comforts me to know that my ancestors were not courtiers but craftsmen. I like to imagine they earned their living through their trade, not by lounging around, owning slaves, or living off inherited wealth like many nobles of the time.

They were adventurers and travelers. They used their cameras and a newly invented process to capture a world unlike anything painters had depicted. They photographed the everyday lives of ordinary people, without the filter of a brush. What had once been an art reserved for those who could afford a painted portrait became accessible to all. Photography changed the way we looked at the world.

Adolphe Duperly, my great-great-grandfater Henrie Louis Duperly, my great-grandfater

Life in the Caribbean

My ancestors traveled through the Caribbean and the American West. They were present during the early construction of the Panama Canal. On one of those voyages, Henri Louis, a widower with grown children, fell in love with my very young great-grandmother. They married aboard a ship, with the captain officiating. A curious story that leaves much room for speculation, especially since the few photos that remain of her—despite being married to a photographer—show her with a sad, bitter expression. I don’t think she was happy.

She had been born in London and disliked Jamaica, where they lived. Henri took her to Colombia, a country he already knew, and they settled in Barranquilla with their young children. My grandfather was only five years old. But Memí—as she was called—wasn’t happy there either. They eventually moved to Bogotá, trading the humid Caribbean heat for the misty, bone-chilling cold of the Andean mountains.

Memí never learned Spanish. She considered it a barbaric language. She only spoke French with her children—and perhaps with another immigrant woman. I don’t think she went out much.

Arrival in Colombia

My great-grandfather Henri Louis, Memí, and my grandfather Óscar

Eventually, my grandfather Óscar—also a photographer—fell in love and moved with his mother to Medellín. My grandmother and Memí could never speak to one another: my grandmother only spoke Spanish, and Memí made no effort to learn it.

My grandfather educated his eldest children in French and English, giving them English names, probably to please his mother. But when Memí died, my grandmother took over. The younger children received Spanish names—except for one girl named Victoria, supposedly in honor of Queen Victoria of England. That name, which later became mine too, comes from her. It may be the only noble thing I inherited. But photography and the love of travel—those reached me fully intact.

Oscar was a British citizen. He, his father, and possibly many generations before them were Freemasons. As were my other two great-grandfathers: poets, writers, and freethinkers in their time. All of them were stigmatized for their ideas. Some were even excommunicated and kept their affiliation to Freemasonry secret. I didn’t learn this from my parents, who, unlike their ancestors, were deeply conservative and religious.

My passion for photography and travel

I grew up caught between those two forces: my parents’ rigid conservatism and the rebellious heritage of those who came before me. It took many years for me to understand where my impulse to see the world through different eyes came from—to walk solitary paths, to not follow the rules. But now I know.

The passion for image, for words, and for wandering did not begin with me. I am simply continuing an old story, one made of light, distance, silence… and memory.