Boštjan Pucelj / Babi

I hardly remember my grandmother. I have two of her photographs, but they do not suit my - carefully composed - image of her for many years. It’s not real photography, it’s not her, I’d rather say.
From the first photo, a stern, hard peasant woman with tightly tied hair at the nape of her neck stares into the distance, sitting confidently and straight, as if everything in her life is going according to plan, sitting next to her husband, surrounded by a pile of their empty-dressed children. Where does this power and determination come from? Why doesn’t her image tell me anything about a woman who lost a brother on her wedding day whom she trusted much more than she ever trusted her husband? Her brother cleaned her shoes in the morning, promised to educate her children, went to bed, and died in the evening. “It was taken by the Spanish,” they said. I don’t recognize the indecisive woman who one day left her grandfather with all seven children but returned to her even before he even noticed she was gone.