Belongings

(2021)

It happens every day across the world, survivors are left with the possessions of a loved one who has passed away. And then what? Give everything away? Sell what you can? Donate? Recycle? Landfill? Keep it forever? How to deal with a lifetime of objects? What if sorting through those things revealed a person different from the one you knew? You can never ask them why they kept these secrets. Maybe there is no one left who can tell the story of what happened. All at once, you have learned something you didn’t know and can never now understand. I made “Belongings” as a way to work through the posthumous mystery of my mother, who was deported by the Nazis as a Jew but owned a book called “Keep A True Lent” from 1953. Among her things, I found a silver filigree six pointed star necklace and a tiny statuette of a praying Mary she had kept by her bed. She was my closest relationship in life. I thought I knew her.