Accessories, Yet Indispensable

“In her dream she made an inventory of all the times her father had photographed her on the sly without her being immediately aware of it. All the memories were coming back. Photographs in which she is all by herself, and others with Moira. She had to note everything quickly, failing which she would forget and would have to wait for her brain to once again grant her access to this exclusive memory domain during another night of insomnia.”¹ 1 - Laia Fàbregas, La fille aux neuf doigts, translated into French from the Dutch by Arlette Ounanian (Arles: Actes Sud, 2010), 73. In the novel La fille aux neuf doigts, Laia Fàbregas describes the quest of two sisters, Laura and Moira, who have been marked by a singular family practice: forbidding any use of a camera. Their parents taught them the art of taking mental pictures and of writing their impressions down on the white pages of a photo album. But now in their thirties the two sisters feel increasingly troubled, as though a part of their past was missing inside of them. Still holding on to the hope that the pictures taken unbeknownst to them exist, they begin searching for traces of their presence in the archives of the local press.