This is Salwa Emerson. And that is Salwa, age thirteen.
Adult Salwa is on the right of the picture – long dark curly hair, a warm smile, an olive-and-cream top. On the left, Salwa as a teenager, dark curly hair pulled back, in a lighter top. They are leaning in together on a pale background. It could be a photograph of a mother and daughter, except that both of them are the same person.
It started with a WhatsApp message. In July 2025 I sent Salwa this:
I’m working on an art project and wondered if you might be interested in being involved in any way – or just being included in occasional news about it. The plan is to create about a hundred pictures of people holding hands with their younger selves. If I get my act together I will also ask questions about the younger self – stories, advice etc. Here’s one example. No need to say yes. No need to reply.
Salwa wrote back that the idea was beautiful and would resonate with a lot of people. Herself at thirteen came to mind, she said. Or five. Or twenty. We settled on thirteen. She asked her mother for a photograph.
I started with a rough collage. Adult Salwa I built from pictures of her that I easily found online. Teenage Salwa came from the photograph her mother sent. As I worked I sent Salwa notes about what I was doing – which images I was choosing, what mood I was trying to match. At one point she wrote back:
Cool process. Thanks for letting me into your world.
For the hug I searched for reference photos of mothers with daughters, and older sisters with younger ones, sitting side by side on a sofa. I picked one whose angle matched the two Salwas I already had.
When I sent Salwa the finished picture, she wrote back:
Omg this is making me tear up already ❤️
Seriously. You just made me stop in my tracks. I think this is gonna be a very powerful project for everybody.
Some time later she sent me a voice message, thinking about what she would actually say to that thirteen-year-old girl. Here she is, in her own voice.
When I was 13 I was going through a really hard time. I’d moved from Massachusetts back to New York a year or two before, and was going to a private school with a lot of actors and actresses, and I felt very insecure. I’d come from being a big fish in a small pond.
I had lost my grandfather. I had lost my next-door neighbour. I lost a bunch of people that year. So it was also just extremely sad. My mother was busy. So there was a lot of turmoil inside, and no one to talk to about it.
So I’d say to my younger self – I would let her talk, more than even tell her something. I would tell her that she was dealing with so much. That she was brave and strong and resilient and loveable. That one day she would be an amazing mother to her kids, because she would know what it felt like not to be heard or seen, and would never once want her kids to feel that way. I would tell her that all of the loss she was feeling wouldn’t always feel that way.
I would let her talk, more than even tell her something.
That is the whole thing.
This is one of the portraits in Contain Multitudes, my show at Burgh House, Hampstead, 18-23 August 2026.