I believe the press release Julie released sums it all up the best…
One Shoe Diaries™ – The Twilight Zone Connection
When life is stranger than fiction
February 3, 2007 – Encinitas, California – Award winning fiction author, Julie Ann Shapiro (click here to learn more about Julie) shares a Twilight Zone moment on a phone call that’s a story worthy of being on the Oprah show. “I answered the phone and felt a deja vu twinge when Randall Louis Hamilton (click here to learn more about Randy), the famed photographer said, “I have the One Shoe Diaries – Photo Collection.” I stopped breathing for a second. “You what… no it can’t be, that’s the same name as my novel, One Shoe Diaries? In it Brad [the main character]? obsesses with photographing singular shoes, the ones he’s see everywhere. He calls it Shoe-osophy.”
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Shoe-osophy embodies the wisdom, the dogma of the lost and abandoned shoe. The singular shoe is becoming a post millennium archon, an inanimate totem for unstable times; like new age wisdom decrees; things show up for a reason.
Lost shoes are everywhere, littering the side of the highway, floating in the tide, going upstream with the Salmon, or occupying a field like a dead body, discarded and left to rot.
Never staged or studio altered the lost shoes are photographed as they appear. A throw back to pre-computer generated images, before reality and conjured up realities vied for attention.
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Photographer, Randall Louis Hamilton responded, “That’s me…I also photograph the solo shoes I find in my journeys where they lie.” A mutual pause…”It’s both of us.” From two separate coasts, both Randall Louis Hamilton and Julie Ann Shapiro shared an artistic vision, albeit independently. Neither artist knew about the other’s work or the many parallels that existed between them. Simultaneously in Florida where Randy lives and in Southern California where Julie lives, a fascination with the “one shoe sightings” emerged. Both artists wondered about the untold story of the singular shoes. Julie imagined a table top book of the shoe photos to go along with her novel; the very photographic collection Randy is amassing. The One Shoe Diaries™ – Photo Collection will be in its first gallery showing in March 10th in Pensacola, Florida. Not so different than the photographer in Julie’s novel, who also wound up touring the galleries. Randy also imagined people sharing stories about where and when they noticed a singular shoe sighting. When it all materialized in real life, both Julie and Randy felt like they’d stumbled into the Twilight Zone.
Randy states, “When I came upon Julie’s online announcement of releasing a book named The One Shoe Diaries™ I was both excited and disconcerted. After speaking for a bit on the phone we just knew there had to be a way we could collaborate on this shared vision. We decided I would change the name of my novel to Jen-Zen and the One Shoe Diaries and he would continue to create his One Shoe Diaries Coffee Table Book but we would cross promote each other.”
