An “en plein air” shoe shop, on the hood of a shabby car in Chernihiv. Indeed, it is not a shop, it is not even a flea market. It makes you think of bookcrossing, or something similar: however, instead of the book you read, you leave a pair of used shoes, and whoever wants to can pick them up and take them with them. In every escape – due to calamity, natural catastrophe, terrorist attack, explosion – there is some shoe that gets lost.
I remember that I was struck by the image that, in the expanse of dust and debris of 11 September 2001, highlighted a lost shoe. He seemed to be saying how sometimes humans are forced to run away, literally run, by the fury, by the violence of history. The shoes that Vitalii inspects – these shoes perhaps a little worn, but still usable – suggest a journey that begins again, that somewhere can start again.