“Vou a casa”

“I’m going home” Canon R6

In 2024, I understood the only story I was qualified enough to tell was my own. One about being a portuguese village girl.

“Vou a casa” is an ongoing project

Named after the expressions that I, and others who have also migrated to the city, use whenever we go back to our parents’ place. An expression that has the luxury of having a place of belonging (or not) to go back to and the curse of living divided lives.

Below are some of its chapters.

CHAPTER #01: portraits

My first studies with film. Beginning with the women in my family, I expanded to everyone else willing to participate. Jul. 2022 - Jul. 2023.

[Below]

I went to visit Ofélia to see her new house and boyfriend. She happily told me about their love story - how they knew each other while young and met again after decades, both already widows. “Back then I didn’t want him, and look now!” she said, laughing.

In the afternoon, she brought me to her old place, where she lived with her husband, until dead set them apart. In the same house where she had previously lived with her parents, Ofélia showed me the axe marks on the doors, where there were cords left instead of doorknobs. They were made by her late husband in his rage episodes, usually after drinking. During that period, she worked in the local high school, cleaning and managing departments. She was, unanimously, a student favourite. Aug.2024

CHAPTER #02: the ongoing jungle

Home and countryside come to me as synonyms. The backyard, my rural jungle. Time seems to stall, giving small clues of its continuity, of its progression, of the “outside” interference - that urban outside where they say everything happens. However, in my village, I always get confirmation: it isn’t the past that lives there - it is just mine. Life keeps going, and there’s a lot of life happening there.

The photos below were taken in Rocas do Vouga, where I was born, and in Pessegueiro do Vouga, where I lived since I was 3 y.o. Dec. 2023

CHAPTER #03: the wildfires

“Going home” is going to the land where “ours” and “mine” take shape, the shape of river and mountains named Sever do Vouga. It is going to the place of those who raised me, and those who have raised those who raised me. ”I’m Ana Mendes, I’m from Sever”, are the only guaranteed self-details I’ve always had to share. I’m from a land where it is “normal” to miss work to put out the fire in the backyard of people’s homes. I’m from the countryside, the interior, that place where rivers flood the neighbor's soil in winter and wildfires devour forests during summer. From where you feel the effect of post-Pedrógão: what used to be “normal” now carries the premonition for tragedy.

For days, the roads were blocked and I watched on the news how my friends and family surroundings burned. My land suffered, and in September 2024 got all painted in mourning black.

These were my photographic recordings on the following days. Sep. 2024