Abandoned Shoes - ASW

The Untold Stories of Abandoned Shoes

I've written about my fascination with abandoned shoes before. It started when I was a kid. I was both horrified and fascinated imagining how anyone could lose their shoes. It seemed unbelievable and when I'd see them I'd be aghast as my fertile imagination came up with scenarios to explain the loss of something seemingly so important to one's journey, metaphorically and figuratively. If you've lost your shoes, how do you continue? In life as well as to your immediate destination. I began photographing abandoned shoes about 10 years ago and I have built up quite a collection. Some seem like real evidence of horror or murder stories, others filled with the intrigue of a spy movie. I've seen beautiful shoes, very poor condition shoes and even slippers. Abandoned loafers in London's most expensive streets, cowboy boots behind the church and most recently, a pair of size 9, smart brown brogues sitting nonchantlanty against a wall as if the wearer abandoned them to leap over it.

discarded white pumps, Ellingfort Road, Hackney London

This photo haunts my memory.

It's a cheap pair of very well used abandoned pumps / (sneakers) from a discount high street shope, left neatly paired on a garden wall. They reminded me of the type kids wore for Phys Ed in school when I was a child and they were women's flimsy shoes. There was a real air of sadness about them. The ground in dirt giving the wearer a poor appearance no doubt. Hey, who knows ? perhaps they had been bought specially for attending a muddy music festival or had been at a concert in the park. Knowing that they were a really cheap pair of shoes, seeing how well worn they'd been and the way they'd been left so neatly made me wonder about the owner. What their story was. It felt intuitively sad. Although I've seen far more dramatic #abandonedshoes in my time with perhaps more violent and torrid suggestions, this pair loom large in my mind when I think of abandoned shoes and their cavernous stories. I think it's because when I was a kid, the kids with crap shoes were poor. It was a mark of low income. It always made me feel sad to see a kid in poor shoes. I was really lucky always having good shoes and I often sat and polished mine until they shone. Perhaps like most art or expression, it says far more about the artist than the subject.