On Shoes and Photographic Truths

I returned those last three pairs to their respective trees last Tuesday.

It's strange to really think about how much this project has changed over the course of the term, and even more strange to consider how it's changed me as an artist and a person.

I've gotten a lot better at tossing shoes in trees. Not to where I can chuck a pair twenty feet up in a tree, but good enough to catch a branch within six to ten feet in the air. That's about the range the shoes were in when I found them, so I am telling myself I am staying true to how they got there.

I've also gotten way more introspective about stuff I see and places I go and what bits of my presence are left there, or at least impact the space. While at OU I've struggled with exactly how to put more thought into why I am drawn to certain spaces and how I interpret them. The multiple layers to this project have really helped me conceptualize all of that with much more ease. The facets to my approach (fishing shoes out of trees, photographing the trees and the shoes I fished, exhibiting the shoes I fished with the photographs I composed, returning fished shoes to where I found them, turning the lens on myself as I develop my throwing skills) have given me multiple ways to think about my relationship to the space and how all of these approaches intersect.

For a while I've known I want to interact meaningfully with where I live and know more about its history. I am getting closer to my third and final year here. Quickly I am realizing that 1: my thesis is looming, 2: grad school is creeping up, 3: it is very likely I am going to move somewhere new for grad school, and 4: I have not seen a lot of my temporary community, nor do I know much about it.

This shoe project has proven how important it is for me to spend a lot of time in a space, get to know it, and understand how I relate to it. Photography is my main medium, and it makes it easy to swoop into a space, get the shot I want, and not give it a second thought. When photographers do this in communities they have no relation to, it is disrespectful to community members, the history of the space, and the imbalances of power and privileges that come with wielding a camera in an unfamiliar space.

The camera allows disconnects to fester. Yes, a photographer might depict community members and ask them for a little quip, but does it really mean anything when the photographer doesn't even have a connection to the people or the place?

Photography allots the ability to create truths. Photographs are seen as proof or evidence of something. Seeing a photograph can feel like knowing a space, or at least having an idea of what it looks like. If they resonate with enough people or confirm enough assumptions, photographs transcend themselves and become symbols of a space, a time, and the people who exist in it. Of course, photographs will only become symbols if they are taken by a person who has the right connections, titles, and circumstances.

It is more likely that a white middle-class photographer with a four-year college degree will have their work seen as legitimate and not have it questioned. Without the degrees or money or equipment, a photographer--an artist--is seen as a hobbyist. The hobbyist's voice is not taken as seriously, nor does it reach as many people. Not having the titles does not mean that one's art is low-brow, amateur, or telling a story about a place. Credentials does not mean that somebody's depictions are truths, especially if it is made in a community they have no connections to.

This point is especially important when thinking about how we collectively understand the identity of spaces. White life in the suburbs is seen as normal and universal--therefore boring. Life in the city is unfamiliar and exciting, especially in black and brown enclaves of de-industrialized areas. Suburban white comfort is good for the day-to-day, but it is not visually sensational like the urban environment is understood to be. Thus, many white suburban photographers seek out spaces that will shock viewers, allegedly telling the tale of a world apart.

The Wild West image of city life is perpetuated by media imagery and furthered by the photographers that turn the visuals of community pain into art. Detroit comes to mind. Everyone feels like they know what Detroit is about. We see plenty of images of crumbling buildings and empty skyscrapers and hear about crime. When these images are splashed across the news or displayed in a gallery, we do not question them--they are truths because they are accompanied by an authority granted by companies and gallery records. They are legitimate because of circumstance.

These images are symbols of life in Detroit and de-industrialized cities. They are powerful partly because we do not have big platforms where a variety of stories can be told to the same audience. Images made by outsiders are not countered by the work that is done by community members. Community members' stories are not told; if they are, it is often selectively. Stories that reinforce the image of the broken city and the people who live there are accepted as truths because target audiences--white middle class suburbanites--do not know otherwise (or do not wish to).

This realization changed how I think about my work and my audience. I make a point to shoot and make art focusing on where I live and its history, but it is not necessarily interpreted that way. It is really important to emphasize that this is my concept of my world, and that it is part of what facilitates my research and learning about local history. My images of my communities should not be the singular narratives. There is only so much I can contribute, and it disregards the work of others. My presence in my own work is helpful to draw this line. Turning the lens on myself (as I am, not as a model or a character or something like that) makes me more aware of my relationship to my communities. This is super important to combat the instinct to label some works as truths and indicative of an entire area.

I never thought shoes could tie all of this together for me, but here it is (no pun intended).

~Feelings~

*cue Floetry's Feelings* Yesterday I could have been done with throwing shoes. I was so close. I had six pairs left of the thirteen I collected. I could have cast them off once and for all. Yet I didn't.

Realizing this part of my project is coming to an end left me with a bittersweet feeling. I was reluctant to put them back where I got them from.

I noticed some of the shoes I returned last time disappeared. I nestled a pair of moccasins in a tree, only to come back yesterday and see they were not there. I left a pair of Faded Glory knockoff Converse at the base of the tree I found it in. I am not the best at throwing, and after trying so many times, getting self-conscious when a man passing by was giving me weird looks (how could he not, I was chucking a pair of shoes at a tree in broad daylight while filming myself doing it á la Uncle Rico), I gave up. They'll be fine, I thought, nobody will mess with them. I need to step away and come back to these with a fresh mind.

When I saw those shoes were gone it hit me pretty hard. I felt like I failed. My goal was to put the shoes back in their trees, high up like I found them, so they could continue their life cycle with my project being a small twist in their time in the breeze. I started wondering how they disappeared. Did the moccasins fall out of their precarious perch and get picked up by grounds keeping? It would make sense, but I later noticed the pair of Velcro grandpa shoes with orange yarn tied to them were still on the ground as I left them, just like I found them. Did somebody decide they really liked that half-degraded-dirt-filled pair of nasty moccasins and copycat Converse? I have a whole host of other questions now, aside from why and how all of those shoes got in the trees.

I returned three more pairs of shoes yesterday, and I was extra careful to make them harder to get. Given my height and lack of throwing skills I doubt it would be difficult for a taller person to pluck them off of their branches, but I like to believe I worked to make it less easy. You're not going anywhere I thought as I wrapped a pair around a branch a few times. It was more for my own benefit than the shoes'.

My camera was running out of battery. Since video saps so much energy I decided it was the perfect excuse to hold onto my last three pairs until a later date. Instead I carried my shoes and my camera and my tripod to the highest hill on the Ridges and sat and thought about everything.

It's funny how personal a public space can feel. That busy bit of field is constantly surrounded by people, but I felt secure enough to leave things and assume they would not be disturbed. The Ridges, decrepit and neglected at it is, has plenty of people around, but being up on a hill looking down on Athens I felt like the only person in the world.

This project is just as much about others as it is about me. I speculate about the ceremonies that accompanied other peoples' shoe tossing as I create my own. It's somewhat backwards. I yanked shoes out of trees with a branch as big as me and a found bungee hook (that in itself is something special). Now, like other people, I am throwing shoes that I have an attachment to back into the trees (but unlike the secrecy of other shoe tossing traditions, I am getting video of myself doing it and sharing evidence and anecdotes with friends and strangers alike on the Internet).

While I did not wear these shoes and shape them over time, I did make lifestyle changes for them. Initially they were piled up in plastic bags in the corner of my dorm room. They turned out to be dormant spider Trojan horses, and I kept killing spiders until they got so big I got paranoid about the arrangement (the shoes were then moved to a shelf in the Sculpture building after sitting in the cold for a few more days). I carried giant tree branches with me and casually keep them propped against my closet. I have bits of this project scattered throughout my real and virtual life.

Inevitably those final pairs will have to be returned. I can't hold onto them forever. Though I am reluctant, I think it will open up other avenues of interacting with these trees.