Visiting this partially abandoned shoe factory in Bourj Hammoud, Lebanon, made me question the notion of time and movement. Usually a factory is known for its movement and attention to the functionality of each piece of equipment, nothing in here is decorative, yet when entering this 600 square meter floor everything was at halt but nonetheless intact, preserved in time and covered with a thin layer of dust.
It’s only when you see the huge machines that were once operated by hand that you realize that this place should have been filled with workers, but is now completely quiet and stale.
The factory used to be the only shoe manufacturer in the middle east region, taking orders from everywhere, but during the Lebanese civil war the place had to shut down. The factory primarily used to manufacture the shoe soles which were made of leather, and now has switched to a more modern approach of manufacturing soles from plastic.The factory is only partially abandoned as the owners still produce limited quantities upon order only.
