THE NON-PLACE

These images were inspired by the idea of the non-place, a term coined by French anthropologist Marc Augé to refer to anthropological spaces of transience. These are usually places that are man-made and created for a specific function, such as gas stations, bus stops and corridors. The nature of these places means that most human actors pass through as anonymous individuals but do not relate/identify with each other, or the space itself, in any intimate sense. I was intrigued by the mood created by these places, and the possible feelings of loneliness and isolation they could evoke to show the experience of living in a big city.

I shot the following three photos at night, to create the ambience of emptiness and darkness, only filled with bright city lights, that would further emphasis the feeling of isolation in the shots. I set the ISO to 400 to avoid excessive noise, and aperture towards the smaller end, around f/16-f/22 depending on the shots. I also used an extremely slow shutter speed to allow enough light into the image.

In editing the photos, I cleaned up the background of the images to allow the focus to be drawn to the main space in the image. I also edited away things like exit signs, labels, stairway signs etc. to further remove context from the photos. For lighting, I mainly emphasised the shadows to create a darker tone to the image and bring greater contrast to the image. In terms of colour, I tried to make the tone of the lights more neutral, to create an chilling effect. For the shots with a little more colour (#2 and #3), I did increase the saturation of colour selectively to further emphasize the idea of loneliness, with brighter colours present in the image without human presence.

Here are the before and after of my images, and their layers:

#1


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AFTER
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#2

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AFTER
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#3

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AFTER
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LAYERS

Here are the .TIFF files for my images!