Boot Fairers
Kent, 2013-2014
35 mm B/W
Every weekend the boot fair’ people wake up at the sunrise and occupy a field, a farm or a parking lot. The boot fairers are Sunday nomads that for few hours a week make a car, a truck or a van their stall, resting place and warehouse.
Moving from London to a village in the South of England I discovered this phenomenon that is deeply different from the urban flea market I was used to. There is no pretentiousness here, no distinction between valuable objects and junk. The items on sale are not evaluated on trade base, but simply on the basis that what is useless for someone may be valuable to someone else.
In an economic system that overproduces and encourages replacement instead of recycling these makeshift markets look like a local sustainable model. For a summer I wandered around these stalls portraying the people and the objects they’ve decided to get rid of.
To capture some of these images I had to buy a fair number of shoddy goods. In detail: a Maisy mouse puzzle, a book about cats, a polka dot dress, a polar bear puppet, a pair of wellies, second hand ballet shoes, a knitted dog, a Christmas jumper, a book about up and coming (in the 90’s) British authors, a straw bag, a puppet of Waldo from “Where’s Waldo?”, a mood ring, a pillow, a fake Lacoste shirt, a cantaloupe, a bowl of cherries and much more.
