SAUDADE: Name of the Father


  • Photographer
    Theresa Ortolani
  • Prize
    Honorable Mention
  • Date of Photograph
    2015

I was born at dawn, as 'Dawn', 4:30am – that, I am sure of – as the sun was rising, in Smithtown General Hospital, Long Island, New York. My motherland. In Portugal, my fatherland, I am called 'Aurora'. But, my mother did not raise me. My mother took me home – smuggled me in utero, across International borders – long before TSA's Advanced Imaging Technology was invented, when no one could possibly detect the made-in-Portugal-out-of-wedlock embryo she secretly hid under her dress. I spent a lifetime searching (first internally, then actively), and it's only within the past few that I have come to know my biological family. My adoptive father was a detective, after-all. He taught me well. After locating Gaspar, my birth-father, in Portugal, he became my guide. We began retracing our biological family's footsteps, filming as a means of self-discovery (for me) and repentance (for him).

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