The Lottery reads like a work of speculative fiction: a glimpse into an anxious human civilization suspended between uncertain futures and the aftermath of its distant and recent past. Pittsburgh-based Melissa Catanese (born 1979) seamlessly combines her own recent photographs with anonymous vernacular photos, press images, and NASA archival imagery, evoking the mob mentality and tribalism of Shirley Jackson's short story 'The Lottery' as well as the cosmic indeterminacy at the heart of our unfolding present. Throughout the sequence, catastrophic forces and events are punctuated by archetypal scenes of serenity, tenderness, and fragility. Brief fragments of text from Virginia Woolf hint at a glimmer of hope for regeneration.