Dear Ana is lyrical manifestation of Leticia Valverdes’ award winning project that took her on a journey back to her grandmother’s motherland, Portugal. This extraordinary project resulted in a magical collaboration with the inhabitants of Ana’s birthplace, the village of Mundão. By inviting the villagers to write a postcard to her now dead grandmother, they became the fictional friends she believed she had whilst dying with Alzheimer’s in Brazil.
Through photography interspersed with poetic text, cyanotypes and votive offerings, this personal yet universal story explores transgenerational trauma, longing, migration, and what it means to feel divided between two cultures. A hundred years on, this is the perfect time to tell this story, as Europe is engulfed in debates about borders and nationalism and migration.
Photography by Leticia Valverdes.
Text by Leticia Valverdes, Octavia Bright and Ângela Ferreira.
Book Design & Creative Direction by Billie Temple.
204 pp, bound in fine linen emboss wibalin with foil blocking and printed endpapers.
235 x 210mm (portrait).
Published by Hurtwood Press Limited.
Brazil-born Leticia Valverdes studied Fine Art at London Metropolitan University. Her personal photographic work concentrates on interactions with people and often start with an invitation to participate. Focusing on simple ideas, her work hopes to touch on notions of identity, belonging, memory and dreams.
Leticia’s work has been exhibited in a number of group and solo shows in the UK and abroad. It has featured in various magazines such as the Sunday Times, The Independent, Telegraph and the Guardian, as well as books on the history of Latin America and Brazilian photography. Two monographs have been published on Leticia’s work: ‘And Now My Children Know’ (Quarentena Books- Brazil 2021) and ‘Invisible Lives’ (Vision On, UK, 2000). She has also received various awards and grants for her work.
Photography allows me to interact with people and nature. The images created are a consequence of those encounters. A record and an invitation to cry, laugh and create together. Some of my personal projects are about the individual in their environment while others explore the private and intimate space of an individual.
Leticia Valverdes
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