In my work I explore the matriarch of my family in manipulated photographs. My great-grandmother Sylvia, emigrated from Colombia to the United States in the early 1970s to the city of New York. I seek to know this woman and to unpack her complexity as she played the roles of woman, wife, mother, and breadwinner. Her determination to find a better life for herself and her family inspires me.  As she succumbed to the ravages of Alzheimer’s she became more mysterious and mystifying; I mourned the fact that I could not intimately know this woman who was responsible for the kinships and the comforts that define my life. I create altered family photographs that are cut or painted. Through this process I obscure other people in the photograph to channel focus on my great grandmother. I appreciate how process oriented the photographic process of the cyanotype is. From adjusting the digital negative and choosing different exposure times to the sun. This extensive process is meditative and allows me to reflect on the complexity of the emotions my grandmother may have had. By reimagining these family images I hope to create a new context for them. Through my own lens I’m processing these family images with the limited context and photo albums I have about my grandmother. When I create a new context for these images I am able to reimagine a closer relationship with my great grandmother. I am also able to cope with the loss my family has experienced.