CAROLINE VASQUEZ- VALDES

Senior at Dwight Morrow High School

Toda Mi Vida
2020
Photography

Caroline is a Colombian-American painter and illustrator who decided to go beyond her comfort zone and explore photography for this project in order to more accurately express her intended message. Toda Mi Vida aims to depict how a father and a daughter’s love can transcend time and space by exploring her emotional journey following her father’s deportation when she was 7 years old. Since his deportation, Caroline’s father would send her letters with drawings and would ask her to add color to them because she was (and will always be) the source of color in his life. With this process in mind, Caroline paired meaningful photographs from her family albums with her father’s letters that she saved. The photographs are sequenced chronologically, gaining more color as one reaches the present. Although her father is not physically in most of the photos, Caroline used color to allude to his presence and influence in her life. She hopes the main takeaway for viewers is to see how she and her father were able to maintain their bond and to heed a tale as old as time: love conquers all.