I first saw this work at MoMA when I was in high school. There’s something so delicate about the woman’s fingers being held up to her lip. That touch feels so present, and the sensation comes through the frame. I remember feeling like such a little activist at that time: I was raised around a lot of writers, artists, educators and lawyers deeply invested in fighting for the rights of others. I made early darkroom prints inspired by Neshat’s piece — portraits of a high school boyfriend I’d taken in Union Square that I overlaid with the intro text to Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” (1952). It was very teenage. I didn’t know this when I first saw Neshat’s piece, but the poem on the hand [by the Iranian writer Forugh Farrokhzad] is about a garden that’s forlorn and crying. One of the translations of the title is “I Pity the Garden.” So much of my work is about lush environments, but lately I’ve been spending more time visualizing all sorts of life cycles. Many pregnancy experiences include loss, and I believe that those conversations deserve more space and attention. The more I learn about this photograph, the more I see that it’s been speaking to me in ways I may not have always known.