The remote Wairarapa beaches of my childhood offered thrilling signs of other worlds – a dead fish, a painted plank. Today, the plastic flotsam on my local Lyall Bay beach feels more like a warning.

When visiting the island of St. Kitts, named after Saint Christopher the patron saint of travellers, I was struck by all the washed-up shoes. They were half-buried in sandbanks, tangled up in rubbish and seaweed. Others lay like sunbathing tourists disgorged from cruise ships to bake on wide-open stretches of sand. Face up and face down they held together, fell apart. Some were still making landfall, washing in and out on the waves.

Each shoe portrait is paired with a companion story: not about the shoe’s once-wearer, but about someone (or something) who shares the spirit of the shoe.

We too are carried by currents, worn by the elements as we travel through this world.

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