Boston-based photographer Caleb Cole’s curiosity about the lives of others led him to make his amusing series Other People’s Clothes. In the series, he becomes the stranger by using scavenged clothing and a location in which to create these imagined stories of strangers’ lives. There is an underlying empathy in Cole’s work, even if the humor is front and center. About the deeper meaning behind his witty portraits, Cole says, “Though I am the physical subject of these images, they are not traditional self-portraits. They are portraits of people I have never met but with whom I feel familiar, as well as documents of the process wherein I try on the transitional moments of others’ lives in order to better understand my own.”

Cole’s work is on view through April 5, 2014, at Nave Gallery Annex in Somerville, Massachusetts.