In 2011, a series of events greatly affected my family. In addition to my mother’s unemployment at the beginning of the year and my father’s job loss in April, my grandmother passed away in June. My grandmother lived with my parents and two brothers since I was the age of four. She held together our rituals and solidarity. I yearn for the moments when we would sit together to share a meal, feeling content existing in the same room with each other. While there is no solid definition of what a family is or should be, I am left longing for what was.

Combining lingering feelings of the past with my family's present, I come to understand how our losses caused a degenerative shift in our family dynamics. In The Way By Which I Came, I attempt to harness photography as a tool to piece my family back together.