Sophia Tolstoy matters to us now not simply because she was the great Lev (Leo) Tolstoy's wife, and not merely because of her surprising and consequential photographic legacy, but also because her longings - to have a life filled with creativity, purpose, and love - mirror desires we all have. She led the life of a 19th-century Russian aristocrat, but her endless effort to balance conflicting demands and possibilities is recognizable to us today, in some ways remarkably so.