Fascinating Ways People Try to Leave Their Mark on the World

One day while driving along Highway 50 in Nevada, photographer David Gardner spotted a giant cottonwood tree draped with what seemed to be hundreds of pairs of shoes. It was a strange sight to find in the middle of nowhere, so naturally he got out and started taking pictures, all the while wondering why anyone would feel compelled to do something like this.

“The only thing I could come up with was that it must have something to do with communication,” he says. “People were using these shoes to create this kind of conversation with each other. They didn’t know what they were talking about, but they were communicating.”

Fascinated by the idea, Gardner started paying closer attention to the numerous ways we humans mark our surroundings, or otherwise leave traces behind for others to discover. Eventually an entire series emerged from the images he collected, which he called Making Our Place in the World.

Some examples are obvious, like the picture of “Heather” carved into the soft wood of an Aspen tree. Then there’s Number Hill in Arco, Idaho, where each class at Butte County High School has painted their graduating year since 1920. There are plenty of photos from significant places where it’s tradition to make a mark: a message to Elvis on the brick wall surrounding his Graceland estate, or lipstick kisses on Oscar Wilde’s gravestone in Paris. The hundreds of rosaries left behind at the famous Santuario de Chimayo church show that some messages people leave behind are not just intended for one another, but also for God.

Other photos give a glimpse back into history. At Chaco Canyon, also in New Mexico, Gardner shot the 1,000-year-old chisel marks left behind by the Chacoan people in the soft sandstone walls. He also documented pictographs in the Utah desert, a reminder that using the environment as a medium for communication is nothing new.

“That compulsion to communicate seems to have always been there,” he says. “It’s just what we do. If you think about it, the quickest way to drive someone insane is to put them in a room by themselves.”

Over the course of the project, Gardner says he’s had to think a lot about how he views his own compulsion to mark the world. He says he treads more lightly lately and tries to leave less of a trace on the planet. As for what he’s photographed, he can appreciate some of the sites for what they say about humanity and our shared history. That doesn’t mean he’s solved the riddle of how or why people feel compelled to leave things behind. Ask someone why they left their shoes in a tree—they might be trying to express something deep and meaningful, or they might have nothing better to do.

“I find a lot of it totally mindless,” Gardner says.