Engaging my grandparents in a form of photo-therapy, including photo-elicitation interviews, reaffirmed my belief that trauma is passed down through generations. For example, my grandfather’s experience of evacuation from Stuttgart due to heavy bombing, to live away from his parents in a family of strangers in the Schwäbisch Alps, directly impacted my mother’s upbringing. In turn, this affected how I was raised, inheriting wounds from a culture that I grew up outside of. Alongside these inherited traumas runs another recurring motif in my family history: the appearance of the cuckoo’s egg. My grandfather’s sister was a foster child, his brother later adopted a child from Korea, and decades afterward, my parents adopted my sister from Ethiopia. Each generation has, in its own way, expanded what family means, challenging traditional notions of bloodline and belonging. This sentiment reflects the fact that trauma lives on in the body, rather than solely in the archive.
My photographic work relates to the concept of postmemory as theorized by Marianne Hirsch. Postmemory describes the relationship that the “generation after” bears to the personal, collective, and cultural trauma of those who came before. It explains how my body “remembers” experiences I only had through the stories, images, and behaviors of my family members. Das Kuckucksei fuses my therapeutic self-portraiture practice with the photo-therapy I use to engage my family.
The series began by highlighting my grandparents and me as characters with intertwined trajectories despite the physical distance between us for much of our lives. As my grandfather passed away in 2023, the narrative keeps extending, bringing in my sister Katherine, my father, and my mother, to think through our collective connection to German-ness. I frame this work around the German preposition zu, which indicates direction and appears in both Zufall (chance) and Zukunft (future). Just as my family was shaped by chance, so is its future, leaving who belongs to it open to possibility. My work comes from a very personal place, yet it resonates with anyone who has ever felt like a cuckoo's egg, out of place in their own home, detached from their family, or grappling with their cultural identity. With my camera, I will continue to search for the source of this feeling within myself.
The series began by highlighting my grandparents and me as characters with intertwined trajectories despite the physical distance between us for much of our lives. As my grandfather passed away in 2023, the narrative keeps extending, bringing in my sister Katherine, my father, and my mother, to think through our collective connection to German-ness. I frame this work around the German preposition zu, which indicates direction and appears in both Zufall (chance) and Zukunft (future). Just as my family was shaped by chance, so is its future, leaving who belongs to it open to possibility. My work comes from a very personal place, yet it resonates with anyone who has ever felt like a cuckoo's egg, out of place in their own home, detached from their family, or grappling with their cultural identity. With my camera, I will continue to search for the source of this feeling within myself.