This project was created in 2019 while accompanying San Diego-based artist Rizzhel Javier to the Philippines as she developed LYDIA, a film rooted in her practice exploring memory, culture, identity, and intergenerational experiences of family migration and home. My role was to document the process through portraiture and place, traveling with her across sites connected to her lineage, family history, and community.

The work brings together portraits of Rizzhel, members of her family, and people from her grandmother’s community, made across spaces tied to everyday life and memory, family homes, markets, and gathering places. These photographs focus on presence, collaboration, and the relationships that connect memory to land.

Alongside LYDIA, this body of work also includes portraits and contextual images made in relation to Basura Boyz, a community-led initiative in Sineguelasan addressing waste management through collective labor and care. Together, these images reflect a return to motherland through family, lineage, and ancestral memory, alongside the everyday efforts that sustain community life.