Wednesday 12 May 2010

Love Locked Down

Love padlocks are a curiosity to me. Couples affix padlocks with personal expressions of love to public fences, bridges and lampposts as a means of sealing their love. In Latvia married couples do this, then throw the keys into the river to give them love and good fortune within marriage.

This romantic act of guerilla art happens in Hungary, Russia, America, Italy, Paris, Japan, Korea, Spain, Belgium and even in Scotland, where they're attached to a fence within Kelvingrove Park. They appear all over the world as symbols of love which to begin with the authorities tried to dissuade but eventually gave into, which is why in Russia they are placed on sculptures of trees, the hundreds of padlocks acting as leaves.

It's the modern equivalent of carving your names into an unsuspecting tree!

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Listening: Kayne West - Love Lockdown

2 comments:

Molly said...

I came across this in Prague last year! I took photos of it, but didn't understand why there was a collection of them on the bridge. I looked it up when I got home and fell in love with the idea. http://www.flickr.com/photos/vividot/3469711806/

Emily Boyd said...

It is such a sweet idea. I only knew about it because of a daily deviation on deviantArt ages ago. It was a fence in Korea smothered in locks. I didn't realise it was such a world wide phenomena until I wrote this blog post though :)

Thank you for following my blog Molly, I really appreciate it and can I just say I'm absolutely in love with your watch necklaces since I saw them. They're so cute :)

x

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