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“After you chalk one or two names, something starts to happen,” said Ms. Sergel, 48, an artist who cobbles a living from grant to grant. “Chalking helps reveal a hidden geography of the city. If there are two victims across the street from each other, you wonder, ‘Did they walk to work together? Did their families console each other?’ The whole rest of the year you associate those buildings with that person.”

“What’s important to us isn’t just abstract histories, but things that are grounded in the personal and the tangible,” Ms. Sergel said. “Our role is to shift from just collecting stories and broadcasting them to creating opportunities for conversation.”

It’s a people’s archive.”