Eyes straight ahead, up here, four to seven feet above the ground, we see the usual theater of faces, storefronts, traffic, the horizon.

Beneath the line of sight the pavement is another stage, a parallel world whose denizens enact oddly familiar melodramas.

The camera, like a microscope, reveals a flat world oblivious to ours, a parallel ecosystem of transplants and natives, signs and symbols, geographies and borders.

And of small serial dramas: the formerly privileged now dependent on and finding solace with the locals; couples parted and reformed; castoffs clinging to stay in place or flinging themselves to freedom.

Schools of fish dart in and out of the curbsides. Gloves wave.

Laces reach. Scraps and detritus set off on adventures.

These photographs, all taken within 10 blocks of my home, are of found vignettes of objects on the streets and sidewalks. In addition to the self-imposed geographic boundaries, the series also conformed to two other rules: no objects could be touched or otherwise manipulated, and images could not be cropped or altered.