Private Story
Walaa Yassien | Narjis
2nd Place
Narjis is a visual archive project I created throughout my journey of getting to know my grandmother and myself better. I was curious about being called Nani by my family. Since I was a child everyone called me that and I wanted to know why. It was explained to me that I was named after my grandmother (Narjis) and that my name was associated with her. I wanted to find out more about her. She was born in Alexandria, Egypt and married my grandfather Abdulhalim, who came from Sudan. They both resided and died in Alexandria. Narjis was my grandmother who passed away before I got to meet her.
I grew up and lived in Saudi Arabia, far away from all of the intimate family moments back home in Sudan. However, I was lucky enough to live out some of those happy moments through the pictures left behind by my family. I got the chance to live in places that I never got the chance to visit before, and in a different time period too. This was only possible because of the pictures left behind by my father, and of my dear grandmother. I realised that those photographs were a way to be connected with my familial roots, through those captured moments. Later, I watched my parents treat those pictures as an invaluable treasure, which I understood since that was the only bond left tying them to their family back home.
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