Palimpsesto starts with of a single photograph, found in an archive which houses discarded photos salvaged from the trash by a group of scavengers. It’s an old, faded photo featuring the image of a young girl accompanied by a man and a dog. In an era of massive image production, Joan Fontcuberta asserts in his book “La Furia de las Imágenes” (2020) that more important than generating images is attributing meaning and giving new life to them. The work weaves an aesthetic and poetic investigation into anonymous portraiture within the context of contemporary photography, focusing on a small portion of the aforementioned photo—the girl. The research delves into the body of the image and the layers behind it, exploring elements like memory, dreams, and fabulation.The marks and skin of the image’s body are removed — both materially and literally, and from the imaginary point of view — while simultaneously creating other marks and skins. Fire, water, and other materials, along with cutouts and stitches, are used in an attempt to answer questions such as: What is a single image capable of? How many layers lie behind an image? How many memories can be found within an image’s body? How many presences, stories, words, and fabulations can an image convey? How many metamorphoses can a single image undergo? Fontcuberta views images as living entities that are born, grow, die, and return to the cycle of life. When I encountered the girl’s photo, her absent eyes—faded by time—pierced me and stirred memories. I wanted to return the image to its time, yet we were intertwined: she and I. Her eyes fixed on mine; her skin stitched to mine; her silence melded with mine; her history contaminated with mine. A girl I don’t know, who eerily resembles me—the same haircut, the same shoes, and the same childhood silence. As I investigate the unknown portrait, I no longer know if I’m researching her story or mine, or if I’m seeking her memories or my own. Images have the ability to blow memories out of the darkness, and in this sense, the work understands photographs as living, organic bodies that move between latent times and restore vanished bodies: the bodies that occupy space within the images and the bodies arising from memories (and new memories) evoked by them. Valter Hugo Mãe, the Portuguese writer, in his book “Contra Mim” (2020), says that“life is made of constant resurrections.” Through artistic research, I resurrect and construct new memories and meanings for this anonymous portrait, bringing it back to life—even through sculptures and objects that transcend and go beyond the image frame, much like our memories. The project Palimpsest began during two artistic residencies at ACHO—an archive in Campinas—and includes the essay “Portrait of an Almost and Always,” composed of photographs, small objects, and photographic sculptures, as well as poems, photofilms, videos, and audio. Palimpsest suggests overlaid layers of meaning and history.