This view of the paper shoes - photographed from above and close-up - comes closest to the pair I found on Berlin flea-market and which moved me so. I'm thinking again about how they move - the sadness about them is manifold. Leaving aside their unevenness – it’s enough that these are children's shoes which would not fit anymore on the feet of whoever they belonged to - if they were still alive. It's enough that they have obviously been worn extensively and repaired and repaired, with tears and cracks in the leather and lots of tiny nails hand-hammered in their soles. But there’s something beyond the passing of time that (de)rails me, twofold: It’s the actual time they seem to refer to - war time, fascism in Germany, which I need to explore. Just for now I’ll focus on this though: what I find most immediately disconcerting is the discord here - there being two of a kind, but (probably) not two of a pair, and thus the impossibility of a whole and of restoring them to an owner, even an imaginary one.
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