A special dedication to Jake Lester for his technical assistance and enthusiasm, helping me start a project I had in mind 🙂
Originally, shoes were made one at a time by hand, often by groups of shoemakers, or cobblers. In the 18th century, dozens or even hundreds of masters, journeymen and apprentices (both men and women) would work together in a shop, dividing up the work into individual tasks. A customer could come into a shop, be individually measured, and return to pick up their new shoes in as little as a day. Everyone needed shoes, and the median price for a pair was about one day’s wages for an average journeyman.
Shoemakers may produce a range of footwear items, including shoes, boots, sandals, clogs and moccasins. Such items are generally made of leather, wood, rubber, plastic, jute or other plant material, and often consist of multiple parts for better durability of the sole, stitched to a leather upper part.
Aswan, formerly spelled Assuan or Assouan, is a city in the south of Egypt, and is the capital of the Aswan Governorate.
Aswan is a busy market and tourist centre located just north of the Aswan Dam on the east bank of the Nile at the first cataract. The modern city has expanded and includes the formerly separate community on the island of Elephantine.
The city is part of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network in the category of craft and folk art. Aswan is a large tourist city where the current population is 1,568,000.
Aswan is the ancient city of Swenett, later known as Syene, which in antiquity was the frontier town of Ancient Egypt facing the south. Swenett is supposed to have derived its name from an Egyptian goddess with the same name This goddess later was identified as Eileithyia by the Greeks and Lucina by the Romans during their occupation of Ancient Egypt because of the similar association of their goddesses with childbirth, and of which the import is "the opener". The ancient name of the city also is said to be derived from the Egyptian symbol for "trade", or "market".
Because the Ancient Egyptians oriented themselves toward the origin of the life-giving waters of the Nile in the south, and as Swenett was the southernmost town in the country, Egypt always was conceived to "open" or begin at Swenett. The city stood upon a peninsula on the right (east) bank of the Nile, immediately below (and north of) the first cataract of the flowing waters, which extend to it from Philae. Navigation to the delta was possible from this location without encountering a barrier.
TD : Agfapan 100 Professional 35mm film, developed in D-76 1+1 for 7 minutes. Exposure ISO 100 @35mm lens, natural daylight. Scanned with Alpha 6000 edited in ACR, inverted in CS6.
