Her small tray bears a pyramid of chewing-sticks, balanced so perfectly she could be said to have worn a hat. The fingers of one hand are curled around books, and the fingers of the other are balled so tight the knuckles gleam. The mood and backdrop are grey and unadorned, so that the white of her eye is the shiniest of surfaces, the prick of light reaching us from the past.

This photograph was taken in London.

It was shot in the solitude of what at the time was my studio. I had put up a backdrop made of heavy thick cotton and set up the camera to shoot. Some music was probably playing from the speaker while I was loading the film to the back of my camera. It is a self portrait in which I'm wearing a school uniform that I brought with me from Lomè and I'm holding on my head a tray of alo sticks from the Assigame market . 

I'm impersonating my young mother before I met her, when she was a school girl and working as a market seller in Lomè. This portrait is a way of creating a memory that doesn't exist—at least not in my head—that comes from someone else's recollection and sharing of that memory. 

I like this photo because it speaks about a past that I did not live, through which I learn about my mother's memories. 

I make images that are mostly staged and prepared for the purpose of a single shot. I'm often frustrated by my inability to capture a particular moment as it happens in front of my eyes, and so staging becomes a way of taking control over time and space. 

Photography allows everyone to capture their stories. It's quite accessible. I work with a lot of images that come from personal archives and albums of friends and family—images that are not made to be, or considered as art, but they are an essential influence on my art practice. 

Silvia Rosi, born in 1992, lives between England and Italy. Both photographs were published in the New Yorker, a portfolio by Graces Wales.