a photo essay of forgotten gloves
2019 -
it started with a pink disposable glove.
I found it on a frozen autumn evening in 2019, flattened a sett stone road in Breda like a crumpled heart. That first glove haunted me – not just its loneliness, but the urgency of its abandonment. Was it from a street cleaner? Was it torn off by a nurse rushing home from a late shift?
soon I began seeing them everywhere. A knitted glove fused into the ground in a crossroad in Budapest, corroded after days or weeks of rain. A construction worker’s glove lying by a window like a smoking gesture in Venice, as if the cigarette break never finished. A winter glove hanging on a wooden sculpture or a garden fence in Zurich - it's customary here in Switzerland, hanging lost items where owners might reclaim them. Over six years across cities, I’ve gathered 100 of these lonely gloves. Most come from the streets in Budapest and Zurich – the two places where I have spent the most time in recent years.
each glove tells a silent story. White knitted gloves resting on a subway windowsill as if waiting for tea.The gardener’s glove crusted with soil, the fabric worn through. I photograph them where they fall, using white tape to mark their accidental altars on the print – not to solve mysteries, but to commemorate them. These aren’t just lost objects. They’re frozen moments: a split-second when someone was passing through.
people often ask why I do this. Maybe it’s because I’ve moved home many times this decade, leaving fragments of myself in each. These gloves feel like kindred spirits – displaced, weathered, yet stubbornly present. The office glove dropped at a Zurich train station? That’s someone’s rushed Monday morning. The child’s mitten in a Budapest snowdrift? A mother’s momentary distraction.
this project isn’t about loss. It’s about noticing. In our rush forward, we’re surrounded by quiet evidence that lives intersect here, now, in the most fleeting ways. These gloves are footprints in reverse – not where we’ve been, but what we’ve left behind. Next time you see one stranded on the pavement, pause. That’s not trash. That’s a love letter to imperfection, written by someone’s absent hand.
