Steve Pyke | Soles intro
The cracking of your feet on the road makes a certain amount of road come up into you. When a man dies they say he returns to clay funereally but too much walking fills you up with clay far sooner (or buries bits of you along the road) and brings your death halfway to meet you.
Flann O’ Brien
The Third Policeman. 1940
Soles
Walking is a meditative experience. I walk and travel into my head and work out my place in things. It is my sanity. It is peace. One foot in front of the other, contact with earth, no phone, no distraction. Living in big cities like London and New York City and now New Orleans for many years I find solace in walking. A chance to contemplate and consider my gratitude to this life.
I have been photographing the way I wear the soles of my shoes out now for over twenty years. I photograph them in black and white with a large format 4x5 camera on white seamless paper. They are lit to accentuate contrast. . . I often think they look like the photographs the astronauts made of the moon from space…a desolate landscape.
-Contact Photo from first sole session 1988