As a photographer, Mr. Cardona, 30, was used to documenting Colombia’s bloody history as a decades-old civil war inflicted on strangers. But like so many of his countrymen, members of his family were killed after accusations that they were rebel supporters. His great-grandfather, father, mother, uncle and other family members — mostly farmers who advocated land reform and labor rights — were sentenced to summary executions at the hands of the military.

Over the last three years, Mr. Cardona has confronted his family’s history, drawing upon portraits, family pictures and re-creations of murder scenes to bridge the past to the present with the hope of making sense of — and accepting — all that happened.

“It is so easy to document another person’s pain with a camera,” he said. “But when you document yourself, that’s where I began to feel that I also lived through this and hid it. It was either I do this story or let it be forgotten. I cannot allow that. I told myself it was time, even if it hurts. But I must do it.”