To many residents of Los Angeles, worn out furniture left to bake in the sun on city sidewalks is a familiar sight. To some, it’s an example neighborhood blight; to others it’s an opportunity to score a free coffee table or a love seat. But for photographer Andrew Ward, it’s a photo op.
Ward, whose Instagram and Tumblr pages are filled with images of abandoned chairs and sofas, is compiling a book of the photos, according to the New York Times.
The images, initially captured with a simple cell phone camera (Ward has since upgraded to a FujiX100), have a certain haunting quality, inherently probing the inanimate object’s history. "You know how in the movie 'The Sixth Sense' the kid sees dead people? Well, I see sofas," Ward told the LA Times back in 2014.
The photographer has also captured images of other commonly castoff items, including shopping carts and Christmas trees.
“What has become apparent about photographing this cast off furniture is how some of the pieces blend in with their new unintended environments,” Ward writes in a statement about the photos quoted by LAist. “Some of the sofas look more at home and fit their new location better than they would have ever looked in somebody’s living room.”
Still, Ward doesn’t let them sit for long. He tells the LA Times that he calls 311 to arrange a pickup for the items once he’s snapped a picture.
Here are a few of his most striking shots.
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