What happened to the people who walked

February 8, 2014 10:37 AM

Photographer Shannon Jensen's series “The Long Walk” documents the shoes belonging to some of the 30,000 refugees who traveled by foot across the border from Sudan’s Blue Nile state over to neighboring South Sudan. Additional background on the Amnesty award-winning project.

Ms. Jensen also feared that no matter how clever her pictures were, no one would pay attention and realized that she needed a different visual strategy. She had been trying to make ever more dramatic images to attract the world’s attention, but while reviewing images one night she had a moment of insight — the answer was not more sophisticated images. (NYT)

posted by spamandkimchi (2 comments total)

These are powerful. I can't imagine walking on a lot of these even around the house, let along for many weeks. None of displayed she's are meant for much walking, let along on plain earth. That people did so is nothing short of amazing, but the broken down and patched shoes might be a good metaphor for what's going inside the people who walked miles in these shoes.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:17 AM on February 8, 2014

Thank you. This is painful but necessary to see. Who knew that shoes could appear heroic?
posted by jokeefe at 2:15 PM on February 8, 2014