Magali Alanis
Rodriguez Beaudoin

How can I create images without being pulled by the weight of the past, without nonetheless, omitting the past, without forgetting? Working with an archive that is personally linked to my history and using the cyanotype method, I’ve decided to linger on this question by printing a series of photographs taken by my father in Nicaragua in the 1980s, after the Sandinista Revolution which shook all of Latin America. Unfortunately (or as fate would have it), the negatives are completely ruined. They stuck to one another due the high humidity percentage of the environment in which they were taken. Decades later, as I find them in my dad’s archive, I find it inevitable to be drawn to them, by their movement, their noise, their expressions. There was nothing else to be done with these images but to print them in blue. Why? Because blue gathers us, blue connects present and past and connects us across seas and territory. Blue doesn’t mind if the negatives aren’t perfect, it embraces them regardless. They are scratched, they are full of mold, they are unprintable, says my father, they are beautiful, says me. Nicaragua remains politically unstable as they are still under the authoritarian siege of Daniel Ortega, one of the key members who led the Sandinista revolution in the decade of the 1980s. Therefore, I am unable to trace the images back to their source, to the territory where they were created. I decided to bring them to the ocean that connects my homeland (Mexico) to theirs, the Atlantic, my darkroom. It is the only way, for now, that I can thank them and give back a part of their own story, which has somehow ended up in my hands.

I am here to tell a different story than the one told by my father and by my ancestors, but I do not want to forget what they have taught me. I do not want to forget the stories embedded in our territory and our waters. I am present today in hopes to situate myself in this story, and acknowledge that this traditional territory of the Atikameksheng Anishnaabeg, now called Sudbury, the GNO, Ra’anaa, Isak, Connor, Myths and Mirrors, you, and all of those who have been here before are quintessential pieces of the narrative that has helped me reach the conclusion I have been seeking: I am not alone.

Photographs taken on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua, traditional territory of the Miskitos, 1980.

Cyanotype prints on Japanese paper

Printed in the Atlantic ocean,

Veracruz, traditional territory of the Nahua, 2024.