Newsletter #159 - Empty Spaces
Mostly just my mind
When I am asked to close my eyes and imagine an image, I see just a vague shadow of it in my mind. I do not see color or texture. I only see light and dark shapes that form a silhouette of the image I am trying to imagine.
I don’t have full-blown aphantasia, but according to this chart from Quanta Magazine, I am a 4. Dim and vague.
Nobody would ever argue with that.
Oftentimes, when I am sitting around, vague images will pop into my head. Images of the most mundane places I've ever visited.
I see unremarkable hotel rooms I've stayed in.
I see bland airport waiting rooms.
I see conference rooms with folding chairs.
I call these visualizations, and the photographs I make that are related to them, "latent images."
These dull and boring settings conjure feelings of nostalgia for me, and I often find myself wishing I were in a random town in the Midwest, staying at a generic motel.
Over the years I've enjoyed photographing places like these that are often overlooked and easily forgotten.
They hold no significance or value to most people, but for whatever reason, I am compelled to make photographs of them.
I think it might be that I find their mundanity sort of funny, in an ironic way. They are sad and lonely, and that gives me comfort for some reason.
French anthropologist Marc Augé coined the neologism "non-place," in which he describes these spaces as transient areas where human beings remain anonymous and that don't hold enough significance to be regarded as "places."
Yes. Those places. I am fascinated by them, and in my imagination I am vaguely reminded of them almost every day.
Perhaps I'm drawn to them precisely because of their insignificance. In a world obsessed with the extraordinary, these spaces exist without pretense. They are the antithesis of popular, and isn't that where the truly good stuff often hides?
Maybe the real adventure isn't in escaping to breathtaking vistas, but in finding wonder in the places everyone else is trying to leave behind.
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Kristen Neufeld sees mental images vividly. Maybe a little too vividly.
Zach Vitale has hyperphantasia and doesn’t want to talk about it.
Check out reddit.com/r/liminalspace - empty spaces often take on a very "liminal" feeling in the right conditions.
Great newsletter. I love wandering around my city looking at those places people ignore. The little things you notice by avoiding the “breathtaking” can be amazing by themselves.