In Spite of Everything searches the gaps in my family’s archive, the moments too painful, ordinary, or complex to be saved in an album. Using cyanotype, collage, found photographs, gold leaf, and embroidery, I piece together traces of the women in my family, both known and unknown.Collage becomes a way to literally and metaphorically reconstruct our story. Embroidery threads together ideas of lineage, labor, and freedom—the inherited work of women and the expanded possibilities I hold today. Gold leaf makes the ordinary sacred, while cyanotype captures the essence of memory: what fades, what remains. Through tearing, stitching, and layering, I explore how remembering and forgetting intertwine. Each work is titled as a plate, referencing early film photography and underscoring the project’s ties to material history. Alongside the reconstructed family album, photographs taken during a visit to my grandmother’s home insert my own presence into the lineage—an attempt to hold what will inevitably fade.These works are acts of tenderness and inquiry, revealing what endures when images dissolve and memory persists.