Autumn de Wilde
Zoetrope
Autumn de Wilde was asked to be the guest editor for Francis Ford Coppola’s magazine, Zoetrope: All Story. Autumn chose to theme the issue based on her Mystery Rolls….lost rolls of film often found in her pocket, a purse or a desk drawer etc…
“Archiving is a beast, a beautiful burden. Order is visited but never really found. In some ways, it’s a futile effort to try to catalog a lifetime of visual work. So instead of being overwhelmed by the fact that one can never really make a perfect library or memory, I start making categories and subgroups. The hope is that if I can keep doing this, rather than feeling the weight of the volume of the work, the chaos over decades, I can explore the infinite creativity hidden in the chaos. “Mystery roll” is one of my subgroups.
Over the years, whenever I uncover an orphan roll of film, I label it “mystery roll” with a Sharpie and send it in to the lab. This is my super-advanced technological system, set up so that later, after the film is developed, I won’t forget to identify it and make sure it finds its home with the other rolls of film from that particular project, shoot, or day. I get excited when I receive a new mystery roll back from the lab. Sometimes the photos seem more precious because I feel like they, too, are survivors. They demand to be known, so they can share their stories from the lost and found.”
