Always began with the chance finding of a thin, spiral bound notebook dropped on a sidewalk in San Francisco. I opened it to a random page and read a young woman’s account of losing her virginity. It was unclear who she was writing to, if the text was intended to reach a specific person or if she was personifying the diary. It was a rush of poignant information, completely unrelated, and unrelatable, to a physical body. It dealt with foundational issues of identity, but the identity of the author could never be reconstructed. I wondered how hard it would be to find intensely personal information about an essentially unknowable stranger. How many moments are recorded and lost, relegated to narrative fragments and the truth claim supported by anonymity. I spent the next two years picking up things from gutters.

christopher@russellarchive.com
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(c) Christopher Russell
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