BRIGITTE GRIGNET | I Am Here

Issue 13

Epilogue:
It is easy to take what we see for granted and forget how the extraordinary also lies in the ordinary.
Still, it is all right in front of us: life, love, death...

BRIGITTE GRIGNET | Chiloe: La Cruze Del Sur

Issue 06

In 1974, I was six. I was in Belgium and I had never heard words such as exile, torture, dictatorship, junta, or desaparecido. My mother had a pupil, Pilar, a Chilean girl who came to live in our small industrial suburb with her family to escape the regime of dictator Augusto Pinochet, who had seized power in a military coup in 1973. Everything about her was unfamiliar to me: her language, why she had to leave her country…even her name. I imagined other stories, other lands, and other people, images that stayed with me for a long time.