As a child I was captivated by the fantastical imaginary spilling from my parents' family album, losing myself in it during idle hours, inventing romanticised stories inspired by Egyptian films once shown on Lebanese television. Later I left Lebanon with a single photograph in my suitcase, my boyfriend smiling at me on the beach; the need to see my family photographs again, here in France, came much later, as my mother increasingly let me keep them on each visit to Lebanon, as though passing down, like family jewellery, a memory meant to be transmitted and enriched from one generation to the next.