Discovering My Colors is a photographic exploration of identity, ancestry, memory, and belonging.

Born in the Netherlands, shaped by Curaçao, and carrying Surinamese roots, I became increasingly aware of the spaces between cultures, languages, and inherited histories. Rather than searching for a fixed answer to who I am, this project became an exploration of how identity is formed and how it continues to evolve.

Through photography, archival imagery, self-portraiture, abstraction, and poetry, I approach the body as a living archive—a place where personal and collective histories intersect.

The project unfolds through three interconnected chapters. The Dance of the Ancient Souls explores ancestral memory and the traces left by previous generations. Ode to My Parents reflects on love, loss, and the people who form our first sense of belonging. In Mapping the Invisible: Traces of My DNA, self-portraits and abstract works transform genetic ancestry into a visual language of colour, memory, and emotion.

Rather than defining identity, Discovering My Colors embraces its complexity. It is a reflection on the histories we carry, the stories that shape us, and the connections that continue to exist between past and present.

- Camille Renée Devid -

Part I - The Dance of the Ancient Souls explores the presence of those who came before us.

Using family archives, landscapes, layered imagery, and experimental photographic processes, the series reflects on ancestral memory as something that exists beyond recorded history. The works are not portraits of specific individuals, but visual encounters with traces, echoes, and inherited memories.

The series emerged from a desire to understand how the lives of previous generations continue to shape the present. Their journeys, silences, resilience, and dreams remain embedded within us, often in ways we cannot fully explain.

The Dance of the Ancient Souls considers ancestry not as a fixed lineage, but as a living presence that continues to move through time, body, and memory.

Part II - Foundation — An Ode to My Parents reflects on inheritance, love, and the people who form our first sense of belonging.

Created during the final months of my mother’s life, the series centers on intimate portraits of both my mother and father. Through these images, I explore how identity is shaped not only through culture and ancestry, but also through care, devotion, sacrifice, and everyday presence.

My mother and father carried different histories, geographies, and experiences. Together, they became the foundation upon which my understanding of love, belonging, and identity was built. Their lives, values, and relationship formed a bridge between generations, carrying histories forward while creating new ones.

More than a personal tribute, the series reflects on the role parents play as custodians of memory. Through them, stories, traditions, and ways of seeing the world are passed on, shaping who we become long before we begin to ask where we belong.


Part III - Mapping the Invisible: Traces of My DNA explores the relationship between ancestry, memory, and self-perception.

The series originated from a DNA test that revealed multiple geographic origins within my genetic heritage. Rather than treating these results as answers, I approached them as questions. What does it mean to belong to a place you have never lived? How do inherited histories shape the way we see ourselves? And can identity ever be reduced to a map, a nationality, or a percentage?

In response, I transformed genetic information into a visual language of color, self-portraiture, and abstraction. My body becomes both subject and site of investigation, a surface onto which histories, memories, and imagined connections are projected.

The works move between scientific classification and personal experience. While DNA can reveal fragments of where we come from, it cannot explain who we are. Identity exists beyond data. It is shaped by family stories, migration, memory, culture, loss, and lived experience.

Mapping the Invisible reflects on the limits of categorization and proposes identity as something layered, fluid, and continually in motion. Not a fixed origin, but an evolving constellation of connections that extends beyond what can be measured or seen.