I have fragmented memories of my family’s heritage before we migrated from Colombia to the U.S. when I was a child. My life and upbringing in the U.S. has been a world of living displaced between two languages, cultures, and histories, and constantly moving around with no sense of home. As an adult returning to my parent’s homeland, my sense of displacement only increased. However, photographing what felt like imagined childhood memories became a way to fill what I thought were the missing pieces.

A new visual language surfaced from my remaining Colombian parts merged with my American sensibilities. I found this offered me a better way to understanding than any questions I could ask with my now broken Spanish. I often think about my extended family, many of who still live there, the violent history of Colombia, it’s people and beauty, the poverty, and richness found in everyday life; and the kind of life I might have lived had we stayed, and who I might have become.

Given the divided political climate in the U.S., and increasingly narrow minded sentiments about immigrants, what does it mean to offer a bridge instead? These photographs reconcile my own path with those of my parents, brothers, cousins, friends, and countless other Latin-American immigrants who have also navigated the experience in their own way. The pictures conjure the liminality of the immigrant struggle, emphasizing the value of persevering to find one’s place in strange and disorienting surroundings while accepting that some things might remain a distant dream.