Karin Elsu – Portfolio

Our childhood years are with us for the duration of our lives and our perception of them often govern our choices as adults. In this project my aim was to revisit my own childhood through my 9 year old daughter. By portraying objects I perceive are important to her, I imagine myself being that age again but in a happier world.

The images are not so much a reflection on her experience as a coming to terms with my own. My parents were well meaning but troubled by depressions, post traumatic stress, and abuse in childhood, numbing the pain through addictions. Thus my childhood was not the safe haven they intended for me but a scary place where I had to always tread carefully. When my parents died in 2001 my biggest grief was that now they would never become the parents I had dreamed about having.

Today I see the point of what I learned as a child but I still occasionally feel I’ve missed out on something very important. By capturing elements of my daughter’s life I rewrite my own story into one where I felt safe and protected as I imagine she does. By sharing this process I encourage the many adults with broken childhoods to rewrite their own story. While we can’t change our childhood we can change the story of it and release the pain and thus bring healing to our lives and to those around us.

(Click on the i in the top left hand corner of the images to get the titles displayed)