Buena Vista 504 is a portrait both of my maternal grandmother in Caracas and of the large house she has lived in after having immigrated from Portugal in the mid 50´s. There, alone with her maid, visited occasionally by her adult children and her grandchildren, she maintains a quiet routine in this big, carefully ordered space, separated by a high wall from the dangerous neighborhood that surrounds it.

In the back, there is a greenhouse with plants she tends and a courtyard where she started raising chickens. A matriarch with a strong personality, she is content to stay home in her domestic solitude.

This series of photographs are a record of all that this house embodies and what it signifies from the past. The work is not only about spaces and things. Materiality is just the form that encloses the deepest moments, experiences, and memories of that house and the people who used to live there.

A big family, four sons, one daughter, and twelve grandchildren. A big house. A place that used to be full of people. Now it is a lot of furniture and one soul continuing with her life there.

Photography serves as a tool to communicate the feeling and atmosphere of places where life has been lived. Immersed in the isolation that fill the silent deserted rooms of the house, I started thinking about how one day this place would become inhabited only by intangible memories.

The pictures describe the texture of the space and the experience of being somewhere where objects carry so much importance as beholders of memories. The images again combine, the portrayal of places where time has stood still and individual experience has become part of collective family stories. The house is a refuge from a society in turmoil and a family that has grown up and moved on.