When you walk the streets of Phoenix as much as I do, you are bound to cross what seems a landscape of junk.
At first it can appear as though the streets contain only garbage: fast-food wrappers, cigarette butts and a seemingly infinite supply of discarded Polar Pop corpses. After years of wandering downtown at all hours of day, a different story starts to emerge from the refuse.
For me, it started with a shoe. I walked past the same beaten, tan work boot for a full week before finally stopping to examine it. There were no holes on it, the laces worked fine, the steel in the toe was in place. All it was missing was its mate. Why was this boot left here on Fillmore Street?
This question developed into an obsession for me. Why was the shoe left here? Who left it here? If this shoe could talk, what would it say?
I started photographing them. Every shoe, every lonely sock, every little thing that had once communicated with a person through touch or use and was now left on the street waiting for the next phase of its life to begin.
Through this journey I have found incredible artifacts of humanity that I will never be capable of understanding — the Our Lady of Guadalupe candle left in the tall grass on Fifth Street, the rosary left on the fire hydrant near the ASU Downtown Phoenix campus. These are silent symbols of stories and cultures I will never have the honor of knowing.
More innocent moments appear as well, like the never-used toothbrush laying in a gutter on Roosevelt Street, or the pacifier left on the sidewalk outside of the Cronkite School.
The Salvation Army emblem was something unique though, something truly remarkable. I knew where it began, but I suspect I will always wonder how it ended up on that bus stop.
The world is full of lost objects and the infinite stories they tell. The least I can do is document their existence, and perhaps, if I’m really lucky, make a connection with the ineffable.
Contact the columnist at Courtney.Pedroza@asu.edu.
Contact the photographer at Gabriel.Radley@asu.edu .
