Mariko was a photographer of stars. It feels funny to put it that way. It sounds as if she photographed celebrities.She only took photos of stars in the night sky.  She said the stars were her real home and that’s all she cared to take photos of. Her way of memorializing her origins.

A photograph is a secret about a secret.

This quote by Diane Arbus is posted in red ink above Mariko’s desk.

Accompanying the quote was an overexposed photo of stars, one of Mario’s happy accidents, in which the night-sky looked like a vaporous milk-bath and the stars indigent glyphs.

Mariko passionately opined—People make time travel way too complicated. But really it isn’t. You want to be a time traveler? Raise your eyes to the stars and you have traveled back in time. What you’re seeing isn’t really there, they’re images from 100,000 years ago. That’s how long it takes for starlight to reach us.

I am taking photographs of photographs. What I’m seeing is not what I’m seeing. The night sky is a scrapbook of old photos, a repository of glittering relics, a museum of illuminated nostalgia.