Julie-Marie Duro

Julie-Marie Duro, b. 1984, lives and works between Liège (B) and Luxembourg (L).
She studied philosophy and journalism before turning to photography. Her interests are mainly in subjective documentary narratives and family related stories. She is currently a PhD candidate in Arts at the University of Liège researching family memory in relation to fiction and landscape. The projects Looking for my Japanese Family, Blue Hydrangea and Le Manteau Anthracite are part of this investigation.

Looking for my Japanese Family

We were on a train in Japan when my mother explained to me how my grandfather, who died before I got the chance to really meet him, had a son with a Japanese woman in the 70s. She doesn’t know her Japanese brother’s exact age or where he lives. She doesn’t even know his name. That’s how I began observing the faces of men in their forties who shared Japanese and European features, and started hearing an increasingly strong voice in my head saying “This might be him!”. Since that day I wonder who my uncle is. What does he look like? What kind of life does he have? Two years ago, while the cherry blossom started to bloom, I decided to look for him!
The project Looking for my Japanese Family is actually composed of two chapters: I am a cloud and Today, Autumn (Kyoaki in Japanese).
While at Youkobo, I intend to conclude my quest by writing a last visual poem as an epilogue. Some Japanese people told me that during this whole quest, I was probably following the will of my grandfather’s spirit wishing to reunite the families he could not reconcile while alive. Having not succeeded for the last two years, I decided to give him one more chance and then to let go.

Date	2017.08.01 - 2017.09.30
Place	AIR-1
Website	https://juliemarieduro.com/
Website	https://www.instagram.com/looking_for_my_japanese_family/