The Scissors

The Scissors · a cover motif reimagined as an object to examine up close.

On the cover of The Woman They Removed, the motif is identified as “The Scissors.” Someone has been cut out of the 1912 family portrait. An intact photographic plate reveals a fifth woman. The sequel shifts the question from who erased her to how families, institutions, and archives construct, protect, abridge, or contaminate a story.

The motif, its illustration, and its appearances can be compared. A resemblance proves neither that the same object has traveled nor that two stories share a continuity.