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Anne Piessens
Origin Stories
My parents, older sister and I immigrated to the US when I was very young. Growing up far away from any extended family, I missed what I imagined to be the grounding force of aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents around me. My parents rarely spoke of their lives in Belgium in the 1940s – 1960s.
Recently, I showed my mother this photo from her childhood, and asked her, “What do you see?” She began to tell me an intergenerational story of feuds over money, alcoholism, infidelity, child abandonment, jealousy, and domestic abuse.
This collage series is my interpretation of fragments of family history, as experienced by girls and women.
Artist Bio
Anne Piessens is a Boston-based fine art photographer whose work reimagines personal family lore and humans’ relationship with the natural world.
Her newest series, Origin Story, brings elements of magical realism into hand-collaged fragments of family portraits. Past projects include Meliorations, which imagines ways to heal damaged landscapes, and In the Middle of Something, a portrait series about the tween years.
Her work has been shown at The Griffin Museum, Concord Art, and The Cambridge Art Association, MA; The SE Center for Photography, SC; and Photo Place Gallery, VT.