City’s unity and perseverance symbolised

Boston Magazine is produced a few hundred yards from the finish line of the Boston Marathon, so they knew pretty quickly about the bombings on April 15.

And that they’d have to redesign their May edition to reflect the new reality in Massachusetts.

“We initially settled on the idea of commissioning Marathon-related essays from a number of Boston writers,” said Boston Magazine’s John Wolfson.

“We then set about brainstorming ideas for illustrating that package of stories. Should we create a photo illustration of a runner’s bib in the shape of a heart? Should we photograph a tattered marathon olive wreath on a black background?”

Then their design director, Brian Struble, and deputy design director, Liz Noftle, came up with the concept of taking shoes worn during the marathon and arranging them so that the negative space is in the shape of a heart.

“We quickly changed course and settled on the cover concept and the outlines of a feature package,” said Wolfson.

“We’d shoot the shoes collectively to form the heart, but we’d also photograph them as individual pairs to illustrate the stories told by the runners in the package (which we called ‘The Shoes We Wore’, and which you’ll find in the May issue).”

Time was against them, but they reached out on social media to get every person who submitted a pair of shoes to tell their story.

“To me the cover is about two things: perseverance and unity,” said Wolfson. “By itself, each shoe in the photograph is tiny, battered, and ordinary. Together, though, they create something beautiful, powerful, and inspirational. Remove just one shoe and you begin to diminish, in some small way, the overall effect. Collectively, they are the perfect symbol for Boston, and for our response to the bombings.”

Meanwhile, the surviving Boston Marathon bombings suspect has been released from a civilian hospital and transferred to a federal medical detention centre, officials say.

The US Marshals Service said Dzhokhar Tsarnaev left Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre overnight and was taken to the Federal Medical Centre Devens about 65 kilometres west of Boston.

The facility, on the decommissioned Fort Devens US Army base, treats federal prisoners and detainees who require long-term medical or mental health care.

Tsarnaev, 19, is recovering from a gunshot wound to the throat and other injuries suffered during his attempted getaway.

The college student was charged with setting off the shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker bombs that killed three people and wounded more than 260 people.