Marie-Helene Villierme

Born from a Tahitian father and Italian mother, I grew up on our ancestral family land in Mahina (Tahiti) with the ocean nearby. Growing-up, I was always surrounded by my relatives, my uncles and aunties would keep an eye on us while we would spend most of our time paddling in the ocean, playing in the yard with my cousins or simply sharing meals at the huge wooden table.

When I think about it, it really is my childhood that made me aware of the power of communities, the aroha shared and the lack thereof. When leaving for France for my studies, I remember the overwhelming feeling of longing for the long meals we would share at home and the nostalgia I felt which turned out to be an instrumental moment on my path, convincing me to record and capture the essence of community-building, endurance and collective memory; to keep a record of what endures and what brings people together and what remains, in an ever-changing world.

Ever since that moment, I have made photographic exhibitions that portray just that: the enduring ties that hold people together in times of change. My book Tangata: A Polynesian Community documents the atoll-based rural communities in the Tuamotu islands. My most recent documentary ''Pouvaana Te Metua'' that could be translated as "Pouvanaa the forefather follows the life and legacy of the first Tahitian nationalist and its influence on the contemporary Tahitian political culture in the post World-War II era.

My latest book The Witnesses of the Bomb (2013) features the testimonies of a myriad of different actors who lived through the 30 years of French nuclear tests in French Polynesia and who finally decided to lift the veil of silence and speak about their experiences. Bridging S/Pacific storytelling, I intend with this project to share stories of communities (I interact with and belong to) in the way to deposit legacies & short memorable stories that our children will hear as voices of our vivid (or living) memory.

November 2021