ANYA CUTRUFO

In my travels, I'm always on the lookout for strangers to slink next to, hoping for the chance for chat. Oh, to crawl inside their heads and suss out their joys, their tragedies, how they dealt with their blows, and how their futures were ultimately shaped by them. It's heady stuff, and I can never get enough. I'm never surprised at how easily folks will share their stories. We all want someone to talk to, I suppose.

 

Sometimes, though, I come across a different kind of stranger, one that cannot tell me their tale, cannot let me into their life even for a moment. They are forever silent, leaving me to fill in the story I imagine for them. Sometimes they are still. Sometimes they move and even speak, though I cannot hear them.

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They are the strangers forever captured in the 35mm photographic slides and 8mm home movies left behind in the homes of the recently deceased. Their proof of existence rescued, tenderly curated, and marveled over by loving eyes.