All of Them

ALL OF THEM
Erika Morillo

ALL OF THEM
Erika Morillo

Constanza Zambrano
FOREWORD
"To be human, is to be lost in the woods."
A little girl.
A father whose silhouette got lost one day, while walking through the mist.
A mother who suddenly felt that familiar pain again, a muffled blow to her heart.
An implosion of sadness, an old wound still there, preserved, frozen in time.
A woman lost in thought, the little girl unable to bring her back.
A white room, so vast, so empty.
The woman was left speechless in the face of another loss, she refused to mention him again.
Maybe the pain was too unbearable. She made up her mind: all his photos had to be tossed,
just like her recollections. The images vanished from her consciousness that day, along with him.
Everything was obliterated by a prolonged silence.
A little girl walking the tight rope, suspended between two worlds.

Photography is the wizard that brings back lost memories and in an image conjures up the evocation of what is
missing. In the reflection of other faces and places, Erika Morillo narrates an intimate story, one that was halfway
told, left incomplete through the years. Possessing only fragments of her childhood, she gathers the vestiges of her
broken family history in these pages.
The author unveils a story that is a quest for signals, an investigation of the remnants left by a father who vanished
too soon. In a rhythm that is unhurried, almost cinematic, Erika seems to collect the traces of her existence one by
one, thus rebuilding her memory. Through these photographs, we can almost feel the remembrance of her father
as a presence, a subtle breeze, almost imperceptible, hovering above us until out of sight. How do we preserve the
air we once breathed?
The hazy and mysterious atmosphere that impregnates these family photographs, appears suddenly as if
emanating from another world, an in-between terrain. Perambulating through her experiences is a mirage, just like
the deceitful nature of our remembrances.
What is this book to me? A goodbye, a letter never sent. I wonder... what will its destiny be? Where will it be
sent? And another question, perhaps a more urgent one: Is it possible to leap through time with a letter?
Photography awards us that possibility.
Yes, in her book, Erika has sent a letter to the portal, leaping through time to salvage a beloved image blurred by
the years. This book becomes a spell to enchant her memory, a magical act to bring her father back-suspended
between what's imaginary and what's real-from the other side of oblivion.
I like to think of Erika as an image collector. Weaved together are the lives of her father, her mother and her own.
Through these photographs, she had to endure an arduous journey back to her mother's upbringing, walking
blindly through her pain, her losses, the absences in her life, to bring back the misplaced existence of her father in
order to reconstruct his image in her memory. This is an act of moral courage, one that requires entering the
occult, visiting the shadows of our parents, their pain, entwined so tightly with our own. But in collecting the
images of those before us, it is our own portrait that is being revealed to us.

What drives Erika to this quest? An unknown impulse, an inner monster grabbing her from the shadows,
bringing to the surface that which is both fascinating and terrifying, and that hides in a remote place, always far
away from our reach, remaining there, tightly closed in the darkness. Something of this other part of ourselves,
which is revealed in these photos, remains inaccessible.
Following the connecting thread in these images, I can imagine the journey to her childhood as a labyrinth, a
universe of tiny signals, which the author follows bravely, feeling her way through the shadows. In the depth of
our recollections reside the remembrances, the voices, the sensations, the surfaces, the textures of distant ages.
Erika follows them only to realize they lead to a bottomless place, one which cannot be fathomed. Maybe the
elusive nature of childhood and of the image of our parents is what drives us to keep searching. What lies behind
the veil of childhood? A mystery larger than us.
I think about this and certain moments come to me, where childhood presents itself to us as a dim flickering
light, blurry from afar, and we don't want that light to go out, because something inside us calls for it, almost
longing for the light that will guide us through the unknown. Yes, a nostalgia for the light also lives in Erika,
a search for the connecting thread, for a guide in her consciousness that can bewitch fear in order to move
forward, to face the uncertainty of growing up.
Childhood, imbued with a sacred attribute, represents a lost empire inside our recollections. Even its most
devastated ruins, its deepest crevasses-the broken loves of our childhood-awaken in us a sad longing, a love that
is almost maternal. We love these wounds, those remote disillusionments, because they are ours and no one
else's. We love them because in them we face our own vulnerability in the most real way. Maybe this is what
moves me most about this work. The way in which Erika unveils a strange beauty where there is rawness. The
violence and pain in the sacred temple of childhood seem to acquire, through these images, a poetic quality that
lightens and ultimately sublimates her pain. Maybe that beauty is apparent because there is truth in what she
expresses, making this work utterly human.

To be human is to be lost, on the verge of the unknown. This family photo album that the author reconstructs
from the ruins and lays in our hands, comes to life in silence, articulating much more from what it leaves out than
from what it includes. Erika's history is full of interruptions, of small empty spaces, of questions nobody
answered.
Following her on her quest, I suddenly see myself recalling my own empty spaces and the narratives that I have
subconsciously used to understand them. What answers did I find to my parents' contradictions, to the absurd,
to the unexpected turns of destiny?
Collecting images missing from our memory and giving each one its place inside us is a healing act. Little by little,
we start seeing the nuances and accepting the contradictions in our parents, and by doing so, we allow them to be
human. Maybe they are also in dire need to be seen in a more benevolent way.
The answers to our questions might never be revealed to us, but it is precisely in asking these questions that we
find completion. Because even in our own spaces that have been lost, we can thread a new narrative that permeates
our history with new meaning. Life unfolds in the empty space of silence, and through it, it is endlessly renewed.
October 2016, Santiago de Chile

Erika Morillo
INTRODUCTION
It was a cold night, late November, and I was early for a date. I walked the streets of Brooklyn, trying to kill time,
when I saw the soft yellow light coming from the window of a thrift shop. I walked in, instantly drawn by the
plethora of unique objects on sale. Elegant, colorful hats like those worn by stylish southern ladies at Sunday
mass, thick bottles of cloudy glass, advertising paraphernalia from the 50's. Among these finds was a large
wooden box atop a table filled with old discarded photographs for sale at 50 cents each. I dug my hands deep in
the pile, as if fishing for a lottery number, and with a swiftness that felt almost instinctive, I picked out two or
three dozen black and white photographs.
I have always been drawn to black and white photos and the nostalgia they transpire. I gathered these photos and
headed to the counter. The shop was warm and inviting, dust collected lightly on its surfaces, as if indicating my
visit there was also a revisiting of an abandoned place inside. Jimmy Hendrix was playing in the background,
alongside the comforting sound of the creaking wooden floor underfoot. I hand the photos to the man behind the
counter, who looks at me and asks: "May I ask why you are buying photographs of strangers?" His question
caught me off guard, prompting me to answer without hesitation, and with a certainty that felt both guttural and
exciting, I told him: "I think I want to tell my family history with these photographs." We both remained silent.
He put the photos in a white envelope and I walked out into the cold night.
The idea for this book came to me this way, serendipitously, when I wasn't looking for it. For many years I have
been trying to make sense of my family history to no avail. It frustrated me greatly that I do not have a single
recollection of my early childhood. They say our mind is wise and blocks out the things we can't cope with.
These lacunae in my mind of my early years left me with a yearning to collect images, to ask others what they
remember about my childhood, about my parents, about my father's death.
Until this project, my memory had been composed mainly of fragments and anecdotes others told me; by certain
dreams that visit me promptly and then leave me like fleeting stars; by what my mind and soul make up as poor
excuses to fill in the gaps. When I found these photographs, something in these images attracted me, felt utterly
familiar. On further inspection, the faces and places reflected on the frail, disheveled paper were images I
recognized, long buried in my brain.

I understood then, that they were presented to me as an opportunity, a chance to reconstruct the story from
what these images helped me to recall, certain emotions that despite arising from photos of complete strangers in
strange places, were more reliable than the information I had clumsily collected throughout the years. Through
found photography, I was given the gift to retell my family history, to myself.
All of Them interweaves these found photographs with the few images I have of my parents, alongside a
narrative that asks all the questions I have been keeping inside. This book is the conversation I never had with
my father, as well as a coming to terms with the turbulent relationship I had with my mother. It is the best way
I devised for myself to understand where I came from, but also to acquire the necessary distance from it in order
to heal. This work is also my testament to just how powerful a photograph can be.
I truly believe that it is in strange lands and in unexplored situations that we discover the most about who we
are, because there is nothing familiar to reinforce the old narratives we tell ourselves. It is my hope that those
who experience this work and enter the strangeness of it, can recognize something of themselves in All of Them.
October 2016, New York City

Those who have memory, are capable of living in the fragile present.
Those without memory, can't live anywhere.
Patricio Guzmán, Nostalgia for the Light

I had a dream that I was looking for you in the streets of the country across the border.
I walked the crowded and dusty roads, handing out flyers with your picture on them.
I was exhausted when I finally found you. I said to you: "Daddy, it's me,"
but you treated me like a stranger.

I remember that town, with the white Jesus Christ on the cross at the entrance,
the tall pine trees, and the house with the wooden floors. I used to make houses of cards
on that creaky floor. The air was cold and misty and it dampened my nostrils.

They say mom and her sisters were the talk of town, the most beautiful anyone had ever seen.
But beauty can be such a burden.

Was she ever loved?

She exasperated grandpa when he drank.
He left her lying on the floor, bleeding from her little ears.

The Pretty Sisters. That's what I call them. I used to look at pictures of them when I was a child.
I wanted their long, straight hair and fair skin. I always felt like an ugly child.
I baby powdered my face and massaged my nose until it reddened.
Did you think I was pretty?

Mom was one of nine children. But after that day, there were only eight.
It all happened so fast. My uncle was not supposed to be there when grandpa came home.
He was just trying to protect grandma. Mom was playing with her doll on the front porch when
the gunshots rang out.
Do you think the Pretty Sisters miss their big brother?

The youngest of the Pretty Sisters was putting handfuls of cotton on grandma's chest,
but her hands were little and the cotton soiled quickly with a sour metal smell.

Nuns, old dolls, dirty old men, only one pair of shoes.

As a child, I remember wearing expensive white dresses imported from Spain,
the kind only rich people could afford.
Did the Pretty Sisters have dresses at the orphanage?

I've heard so many different stories about what happened to you.
Were they gentle with you? I didn't get a chance to fall out of love with you.
They looked for you for days, through the lush woods and in the thin rivers that drizzled
down those mountains.

Interweaving found photographs with her own family photos, Erika Morillo reveals
an intimate family portrait in All of Them. Narrated as a conversation with her father,
hers is a feverish tale that takes us to the nucleus of a family scarred by violence and
loss, but also characterized by strong attachments and a profound longing.
All of Them is a mysterious reverie laden with questions, where real and imagined
memories coexist, blurring the lines between fiction and reality.