Things Left Behind
People pick up and move on in their lives, but their belongings don’t always make it with them.
Questions begin to arise when you’re staring into the eyes of a discarded doll or at the splintered ivory of a forgotten piano.
Who left these objects behind? Was it hard to do so? Were the objects placed in their final resting place with tenderness and care? Or were they abandoned in a hurried frenzy as people fled their homes?
The existence of left-behind objects is a stark reminder that people once inhabited these spaces—people that played, ate, laughed, worked, and rested in the rooms between these walls.
These collections may gravitate towards grit, but fragments of humanity are found in every photograph.
We may never know the stories of the people who left their belongings behind. But we can continue to honor the beauty of their past.
There’s a certain resilience in the objects that are left abandoned. Forgotten and cloaked in mystery, they are left to endure the ravages of time alone.
