Abandoned Couches by Erik Wilson

Abandoned couches. You’ve probably seen some on the streets or in the alleys where you live, or maybe discarded by the side of the road, or even tossed willy-nilly into a field or patch of empty land somewhere. What are they doing there? How did they get there? What happens to them? A few years ago, I was inspired by a fellow Flickr photographer who goes by the handle petalum to shoot and in a sense create backstories for all of these seemingly random pieces of furniture in the wild. His anthropomorphizing theory was that all of these sofas had somehow escaped their indoor bondage, and were now on the move somewhere — anywhere — but free. Something about the juxtaposition of these pieces, designed for indoor comfort and intimacy, but now exposed and vulnerable on their journeys, has appealed to me ever since. I’m constantly on the lookout for them, mostly in San Francisco, where I live, but pretty much everywhere I travel as well. Sofa Free forever!