Forgotten Footsteps.

This project called 'Forgotten Footsteps' came into being when I was photographing the mud villages of Oman in 2014. "I slowly start to realize, while walking through these rooms and passages of time, that some otherworldly presence is with me, following my footsteps. I start to observe, with more keenness, the bits and pieces left and forgotten by the people who once lived in these abandoned spaces. I discover shoes, especially those of women, covered by dust and mud, some embedded in forgotten layers of time. I study and photograph their forms and shapes, wrinkled and hidden from the bright harshness that wants to burst through the cracks from outside. Each shoe wants to share something, some forlorn aspect of the person who once walked in it. I feel the word ‘forgotten’ in every whisper of light that dapples down from the remnants of plastered mud, almost as if the shoes want to return to the feet they once adorned. I try to transcend the physical features of the shoes; go beyond just recording the factual bits of plastic and leather curled up and covered with sand and dust by the crumbling of the mud. In each picture I make, I find a faint spiritual essence of the person who walked in these shoes, in this place on earth. With light and line and tone I just want to blow a little life back into them, let them walk and talk just a little again. Here in the ruins of the old village of Misfat Al Abriyeen, I hear the voices. They are spoken softly all around, as in another time. I feel a sense of trepidation and melancholy as I watch my soft light stroke them photographically. It might sound somewhat strange, but in each portrait I try to capture some of the history of this ancient culture. I am so aware of time that has passed, people who fitted into these shoes, stepping into each doorway with the right foot first. Human objects and discarded debris leave behind snippets of life itself, small forgotten footsteps of what we are and where we have been. The fascination for these lost villages and the people who inhabited them will linger on with the gentleness adorning the memory of their being".