The functional aesthetic of a high-school yearbook turned out to be the right look for a subject that could easily get trivialized by sentimentality; it allowed me to acknowledge the callousness of the events that unfolded. The consistent type size was meant to suggest an even continuum of time, and the gap between the subtitle and the author’s name represents an interruption of that time—the months and years the book’s subjects were sent off to bear their unexpected children. Coincidentally, Ann Fessler was my photography teacher in college, and it was she who introduced me to the powers of appropriation and minimal typography.

“Imagery supports haunting feelings a mother must have about a child’s whereabouts years after an adoption.”