laceframe
By Maylea Harris
Artist’s Statement: laceframe
Shoes on a telephone line have drastically different meanings in different contexts. The strung-up sneakers could be a tribute to someone passing, mark violent action in an area, or become a symbol to leave behind after graduation. I took this photography knowing that every viewer would interpret the image differently. To draw attention to the shoes, I framed them inside the gate and telephone wires, yet titled my image “laceframe”—as if the shoelaces themselves were creating the framing as opposed to their surroundings—because the shoes themselves are orchestrating the context of the image. Whatever the intention was of the people who threw their shoes up onto the line, they left behind a mystery that everyone will decipher differently.
Coming from a background where shoes on a line are simply a symbol of nostalgia, a trace of a stranger who came before you, it is a grounding feeling knowing that there are others to whom the same scene signals danger. I’m reminded of how differently we see the world since so much is dependent on past experiences. I know that what I leave behind, in small dents on the walls or seeds that will someday bloom, will affect each passerby differently. The world I’ve changed just by existing inside it will continue to be left to interpretation. We never truly know how we’ve affected a stranger.
Maylea J. Harris is a senior at The Rivers School in Weston, MA. Growing up, she always captured the world around her through a camera or her words to appreciate the ephemeral moments. Her photography has been featured in multiple showcases, including the Griffin Museum of Photography and Drexel College, and has won national awards in the Rocky Mountain School of Photography Contest and the Scholastic Art Awards. She was awarded the Photography Prize at The Rivers School for four years of dedication and mastery in the art form. Her written work has been published in JUST POETRY’s teen anthology, and her poetry collection was awarded a Silver Key at the Massachusetts Regional Scholastic Writing Awards. This fall, she is heading to the University of Rochester for Neuroscience and plans to continue photography and poetry at the collegiate level.
