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 that house full of boys, they set me up in a narrow hallway with three doors and a small daybed, 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, and their families.

Each night, when my mother closed the doors from the outside, I was left in the dark in that small cubicle, where the light filtering in from under one of the doors gradually lit up each of those characters, who seemed to come to life and step out of their frames. I would try to imagine the lives they had led. A great-grandfather with a long white beard, stern women dressed in black, children and babies who by then had long since grown old and passed away. I would fall asleep lulled by the waves of distant islands, the songs of unknown birds, and the scents of remote kitchens.

For years, I crafted a story for each of them, based on the conversations and anecdotes shared around the big dining room table, interwoven with my runaway imagination—me, a child trapped each night in the half-light. My aunt claimed that my great-great-grandfather Adolphe, the first of our dynasty of photographers, had been a Chamberlain in the Parisian court, though my older brother insisted that was just the title they gave to the court jester.

Beginnings in Europe

The French Revolution broke out in 1789, and Adolphe lived between 1801 and 1864. His son, Henri Louis Duperly —my great-grandfather— was born in 1841 and died in 1907. It was a terrible time to be noble: many were simply beheaded. That’s why it reassures me to know that my ancestors weren’t courtiers, but craftsmen. I like to imagine they earned their living through their craft, not by idling, owning slaves, or living off family wealth like many nobles of the time.

They were adventurers. Travelers. They used their cameras to document a new world, one different from what artists had painted. They photographed the everyday lives of ordinary people, without the filter of paint. That art, which had once been reserved for those who could afford a portrait, became accessible to everyone. Photography offered a radical way of seeing.

Life in the Caribbean

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

Arriving in Colombia

She had been born in London and didn’t like 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 they called her— wasn’t happy there either. They ended up moving to Bogotá, from the humid heat of the Caribbean to the Andean mountains, shrouded in fog and chilled to the bone.

Memí never learned Spanish. She considered it a barbaric language. She spoke only French to her children, and perhaps to another immigrant woman. I don’t think she left the house much.

Eventually, my grandfather Óscar —also a photographer— fell in love and moved to Medellín with his mother. My grandmother and Memí could never speak to each other: my grandmother only spoke Spanish, and Memí never made any effort to learn it.

My grandfather raised his older children in French and English and gave them English names, surely to please his mother. But when Memí died, my grandmother took over. The younger children received Spanish names, except for one girl, who was named Victoria —according to my grandmother— in honor of Queen Victoria of England. That name, my name, came from her. It may be the only noble thing I inherited, but photography and the passion for travel —those reached me intact.

My grandfather was a British citizen. He, his father, and countless generations before them were Freemasons. So 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 Masonic affiliations 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 between those two forces: my parents’ rigid conservatism and the rebellious legacy of those who came before. It took me many years to understand where that impulse to see the world differently came from —to follow solitary paths, to break the rules. But now I know.

The passion for images, words, and travel didn’t start with me. I’m simply continuing an old story —woven from light, distance, silence… and memory.