Portfolios – Fernanda Fernandes

This series is born from the belief that photography has the power to access, reveal, and connect with pains. And beyond that, it can also be a tool capable of redefining these and so many other emotions.

In a moment of extreme vulnerability, after my home was invaded by burglars, even though I wasn’t present, I experienced the feeling of having my sanctuary violated, my privacy exposed, and witnessed the place that should be synonymous with refuge turn into fear.

I wasn’t a victim of domestic violence, but I realized that my own home ceased to be a secure place. I felt usurped and powerless in the face of violence, and upon realizing that this is a recurring reality in the lives of many women who daily fall prey to domestic violence, I decided to take action using the tool I believed had the power to directly communicate with anyone’s soul: photography.

Driven by a whirlwind of emotions, I conceived a series that could reveal not only my own anguish in the face of what happened to me, but that could also shed light on the suffering that many women endure within their own homes.

Pain unites us, and in this case, it led me to even deeper pain and questions that need to be exposed, first and foremost to ourselves, and urgently to an entire society that persists in closing its eyes to gender-based violence.

I wanted a retribution, not a revengeful one, but an action that would yield something good, a revealing retribution.