Accompanied by her mother, aunt and cousin, the family create charming scenes of theatre and dance, imagining and interpreting their grandmother’s life and journey.
When Tami Aftab travelled to Ballinamore, in Ireland, she yearned to see the place she only recognised through her grandmother’s stories. The photographer was there with her mother, aunt, and cousin, to picture the childhood of her grandmother Ethna, who left the country at 15 for Dublin, and never returned. When the family arrived, the trees, fields, river and lake that Ethna had so vividly described were still there. But the house, like the town life, was much changed since Ethna lived there in the 1930s.
The Children of the Wildflower, the resulting photography project, is something of a reenactment of memories never lived. The scenes are based on stories Ethna passed onto her family: dances with friends, walks around the open fields, the view from the window into a giant lake. “It was like a multi-generational recreation of grandma,” says Aftab. Every family member had something to contribute to the puzzle, whether by validating a narrative or adding new elements.