The installation consists of two adjoining spaces. One contains a 16mm film projector which projects an image into the other through a small opening in the wall between them. The two spaces are constructed so that the viewer approaches the projector first and then the projection. The film-image is half the width of the wall it is projected onto. The right edge is aligned with the corner of the wall, and the bottom edge along the floor. The projected film is a copy of a set of four short amateur movies made in the 1920s which I found on the street in New York. The first one is a home movie showing a wealthy family playing lawn games and walking in their gardens. The second film is an amateur documentary about the expansion of a copper mining company in Peru. The third is another home movie in which the family from the first film supervises the construction of enormous additions to their home. The fourth film is a collection of brief shots taken at a bull fight in Mexico or Spain. In both rooms of the installation small speakers play back my reading of a first-person account of what happened as I became interested in knowing something about the films I had found. Existing somewhere between cinematic and domestic space, the configuration of the installation emphasizes the material nature of its elements. The re-presentation of the home movies in a carpeted room without fixed seating reflects their original context in the home, while the decentered positioning of the projected image, at floor-level, obliquely references the film's status as a found object. similarly, the function of the projector itself is foregrounded as the space of the usually closed projection booth is opened up and made to play as a social space, while still being isolated from the projection. If private life can be defined as the time or space in which people are not 'images' or 'objects,' then Situation Leading to a Story examines amateur filmmaking's awkward attempt to create an image of privacy. The installation evokes and questions the privilege of anonymity in looking at someone else's home movies, a privilege bordering on the uncanny--literally bringing to light something which was intended to remain private and hidden. Examining these dislocated images, which point to their lost authenticity as they document their won power relations, Situation Leading to a Story forms an implicit critique of ways that images from the past are often deployed as fantasies of history.