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@an.empty.photo

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https://an.empty.photo (de nobis ipsis silemus)

A clock by the Waterbury clock company dating to 1890 sits in a dark scene, resplendent in its ogee ornamentation and still ticking smoke blooms from its posterior as its pendulum smears.
A dried arrangement of sorghum and eucalyptus sits half-illuminated and soft on a glassy black precipice backgrounded by gray gradient shifting quickly from light to black lower left to top right as woven goods and berry baskets barely escape the encroaching shadows.
A funky 60s or 70s building is dappled AF by soft shadows from distant shores. The buildings second-story facade is an uneven rectilinear grid filled within seemingly random colors and an amazingly vague (if extant) periodicity with the greatest consistency attained by a single cours of transparent windows within which a grey-brown patterning emerges from the flattened dimmed office interior, and unoccupied.
a long exposure image of deeply rutted gravel alley where most greens fade to white and everything crunches, brittle under the influence of the unrelenting and unrestrainable sun
a grayscale pastiche of architectural elements and a crumbling rose
A black and white photograph of a doorway shaded from the left: the front step bears a totemic scrawl of a monstrous face, minor grafitos have left their inscriptions on the brick and glass and contributed their little pieces to the collage texture framing two screen doors shut forever, and, screwed shut tight over locked shop doors of a Reagan vintage and host to the centerpiece of the image, an unaddressed inscription: “HATE ME MORE+MORE” The author of which, in disciplined dispassion or in red hot emotions disregarded the multifaceted topology of their canvas interleaving text with three or more layers of screen and door and glass and blinds.
A rain-slicked sidewalk slides upward into gray skies, crowded by hundred year-old brickwork and on-street parking buffered by a thin row of barren trees. Steam gushes from a vent while a dark figure central to the image cresting the damp sidewalk approaches or departs, an indistinct silhouette.
An alligatored street gives way to gravel road under a flat grey sky carved up by power lines, a dark figure central to the image squarely in the gravel approaches or departs, an indistinct silhouette.
an abandoned copy of the vision times layers at the base of adventuring stairs side lit by midday southern sunlight, giant doors loom cloaked in chiaroscuro and sutured shut foreclosing on a past filled with innumerable footsteps, “has the city at last lost relevance” some may ask without ever stepping foot on empty stairs or seeking empty silent spaces
A color photograph looking through interior French doors toward a room with a checked floor, only a thin strip is in focus even though it is coplanar with much which has fallen out of focus.
A black and white photograph emblazoned 21 12:08 showing a corrugation furred by clouds, a tulip vibrates at hypersonic speeds
A front three quarters view of a cow skull propped against a fence post weathered and showing the topology of its sutures and the structure of its fibers decayed under years of rain. Even bone rots.
Stumbling over rain-slicked asphalt the air is thick and wet but breathable; rain pounds embracing every seam drips banding together into streams seamlessly slipping the one way through thread gaps and moss cracks dripping down from the trees. It’s so hard to see: it’s the murk, things started falling in years ago and this is what remains inviolate, unchanged and still puissant and pure.
Lost in a bamboo forest and blinded by the glaring sun recognition slowly flares that the stalks are streaks and the streaks are rivers carved through the grime of the city settling endlessly on a forgotten courtyard enclosed in lexan.
Shadows grown long in sharp morning light softened by thin fog stretch across velveteen grass clumped on a drowsy hillock lead back to the tortuous trunk of an old oak tree as a cyclone fence dives precipitously into the ground behind.
A color photograph cast green and yellow in low sodium light, dark shrubbery forms a cloudy occlusion of a banal street scene of power pole, power line, traffic control system, and a fading grey cloudy sky.
A grainy black and white photograph of the rear tailgate of a vehicle, more than thirty years old, street-parked and unwashed for most of it. Rain-drenched and coated in algae, microbial tears stream cross its surface topology, the dead layers of past generations blacken having finally lost their war against oxygen. “4.0 litres,” reads the one visible badge: approximately the same volume as one deep breath.
A black and white photograph of layered shades of gray interesecting with the chamfered window rubber gaskets around the window of a decrepit train. The greys, in their sheen, disrupted and discontinuous from indelicate and hasty restriping from innumerable repairs. The whites spallated with spiderwebbed gunshot-cracks where iron oxide protrudes in all-consuming blackness. Through the window divided by highlights from without and the handhold frameworks and windows of the otherside from within a shadowed figure slumps forward in a vinyl seat (unseen) as the time comes for the train to pull away.
A full 4x5 inch negative shows its inky border rebate marks: Kodak 320TXP, the image sticks its ears out showing a rippling seasonal pond in a spot of plains land reemerging from dumpy servitude. A monumental structure rises in the horizon before the trees, an arch, some decking, in memory of what or to what end? Its inscrutable mass reflects in the pond beneath a sky boiling with clouds, both unaccountable to the present day.
A grainy black and white photograph filled with glass reflecting indistinct sidewalk scenes covering (and covered in) shadows and highlights cast by unseen structures with geometries anonymized by distortion as they blend with the interior: a bench, a potted parlor palm, other things all flattened by shadows and rarely caressed by light. The text on the door reads “Fifth Avenue Building”; and that’s all there is, there’s nothing here.
A black and white photograph of a typewriter, Hermes 2000, sits atop a circular table before a mirror. On the table lays a pen, some typed pages, sized A5, a chthonic shot glass, a mirror, a vase filled with dried flowers and seed pods, a pile of papers and books, and cloth. The typewriter is near the end of its margin, the carriage shifted far to the left. A typed page sits in the typewriter, dated December 27th, 2034. The text begins “A typewriter, Hermes 2000, sits atop…”
A black and white abstract photograph: glowing white vertebrae bisect a canvas transected by long shadows as the quiet roar of an echoing depth falls below (or does it soar above)? Lost, again. Most likely somewhere.
A sheet of washi paper painted with a silver halide emulsion and exposed for several seconds to a busy intersection shows its flaws with a ghosted car and a fading edge where light leaked in. The papers texture is evident and the road goes on forever down the center of the photograph; cut off from the sky by an overpass the trees fade into the white and wrinkled sky that has begun to pull away.
A black and white photograph of no commercial or utilitarian value displays the organic pastiche created by multiple shadows, reflections and blurs in the moments where the common objects in an urban environment conspire to confuse and converge in calamity.
A black and white photograph of a barred window swabbed with the interlocking paint of many individual graffiti tags; most prominently MOTHER, each tag excoriated individually and in concert by time, rivals, opponents, and deeply inscribed by the shadows of a setting sun on a saddened tenement block.
A color photograph blurred and hazy, a memory faded from being out in the sun too long drenched in Imperial beer and scrubbed by sand. A rocky headland rises jagged above the turquoise pacific and is garnished finally by jungle. The humidity embraces you; there’s laughter in the distance; you feel no pain as the boat rocks in the delicate waves. You begin to drift off to sleep, what is it to wake?
A black and white photograph, closeup of the back of an orchid bloom. The bloom from this angle: tripartite; two hairy sepals touch the lower edge of the frame and converge centrally at the stem in total darkness. From the darkness grows a teardrop fan white with black stripes that diverge from geometric abstraction into fractal organic fine veins.
A black and white photograph of a black house beneath tall doug fir trees backlit by a full moon in the coldest depths of night an inverted cross glows neon white in a parlor window, the thin lights nearby whisper discretely as the wind scours the streets.
A color photograph wherein a stand of barren and ancient wintered trees long covered in a thatch of moss and lichen dwarf a bench made microscopic in scale, on a thin green berm of grass, and embedded in a bottomless sea of shed leaves, as a thick mist blows in obscuring the sky and darkening the day: it is winter.
A color photograph of two wooden screen doors painted predominantly green but also mottled and painted inconsistently; behind them are mid-century aluminum shop doors covered with a UV bleached and brittled covering of some sorts. Several eras of security patrol stickers are present.
A black and white photograph of a rundown garden shed next to a freestanding rusted weathervane behind a blurred cyclone fence. If you stand here long enough you will hear the squealing of rust, the strain of steel, and you will smell the dust of time.
A single radiant neofinetia bloom with a phenomally long nectary glows white, backlit against a black backdrop, its leaves and roots a chaotic mass raising from a bed of peat moss. The background fades diagonally in a sharp gradient from black to nearly white.
A K.B. Canham DLC45 view camera on a tripod positioned in an urban sidewalk. Some wild and questionable movements have been applied.
A black and white photograph of an improvised memorial in the form of a cross. From top to bottom it is adorned by a silver masquerade mask, a birdhouse with B+B painted on the roof and "Breezie Baby” in a relaxed cursive script and over its door. At the crux of the cross is a soiled garment draped there next to the name “Jack" painted in block letters. Another cross lays in the background, indeed there are a number of such markers here, tucked away on public land, unmaintained and their stories fading.
A black and white photograph of a white vandacious orchid with chaotic roots and leaves jutting about while the white bloom glows in backlight. The backdrop of the photo fades from black to white.
A black and white photograph of a postal service truck. In its window we see the reflection of a deli’s neon sign and the darkened interior of the truck: steering wheel, mail bin, the other window of the vehicle. Framed by both windows is an urban plaza populated with a granite orb and the jets of a fountain.
A black and white photograph of a stream in a jungle behind a strand of foreground-blurred barbed wire, light flows through the clearing above the stream highlighting white tree trunks as bright as the sky.
A black and white photograph depicting two gray chairs on a gray floor separated by a low table and sitting before a faux wood panel wall. The chairs are set facing apart as if to discourage conversation or prevent easy use of the too-low table. A primitive stamped metal lamp, both out-of-place and consistent protrudes from the left of the frame suspiciously angled towards the camera in an unnatural way. It is like a strange dream to be here. No one is around. You will soon be confronted.
A color film photograph looking west over the sea into the setting sun from the shadowed interior of a carpeted room and through glass patio doors. Two deck chairs sit outside on a deck considerably high above the ground. Long shadows stretch and intertwine with golden rays gliding over the Pacific Ocean.
A color photograph: it’s twilight as you approach a freestanding garage, the sky is fading above and the better part of daylight has long ago abandoned the facade of this urban garage to its fate in the pale and murky sick greenish metallic light centered at the apex of the garages roof. A swathe of pink negative damage slides through the shadows adding to the murk. Some lights, when turned on, make it harder to see.
A black and white photograph of the Shemanski fountain in Portland, Oregon. Originally installed in 1926, the fountain hosted a bronze of the biblical Rebecca at the well. The fountain has not run for several years now, the bowls are broken, and Rebecca has been cloistered behind tan plywood. The sun of a summer afternoon filters through the trees above leaving traces of their shadows across the fountain. A chalk smiley is inscribed on one of the pillars of the trefoil design.
A color photograph made from a dirty negative suffering from pinkish incursions from an incomplete remjet removal process with a large blotch front-and-center. Large metal letters for WEST at an angle in a planter. Tufts of soft grass loom above on top a wall; the chrome of the building protected by these features reflects the sky.
A color cell phone picture of a Beseler 45M enlarger with a Zone VI cold light head nested among autumn leaves in the bed of a large American truck.
A grainy black and white macro photograph of a mature grasshopper on a patch of dirt.
A rough and dirty inversion of a black and white large format 8x10 negative of a bean leafed neofinetia orchid on x-ray film.
A color photograph of an abandoned tropical estate, framed still by concrete pillars. The structure is long-gone and without its stricture a fresh water stream has overtaken the lot in its rush to the ocean. Tadpoles and small fish jump in the wheel-worn puddles where a marsh reclaims the sky in its pellucid surface.
A color photograph in the dim light of dawn, shot through a frame of vegetation: a sun dappled spring porch lays relaxed before the camera. A green porch, with a green front door, accompanied by a mid-century bent wire chair covered in a green and white floral themed vinyl cover. Hanging planters surround this sentinel station.
A black and white photograph of a white van across a sidewalk, behind a gate, behind tall weeds on a cracked and broken stretch of blacktop alley. The white van glows in the center of the frame, a women quickens her pace as she leaves the frame.
A color photograph of a lush stucco interior lounge filled with plants and rugs and a polished table centered beneath a leadwork polyhedral glass lamp. The polyhedron is composed of two types of pentagons: regular and elongated; it is set in the scene offset in a parallelogram of skin-soothing bath-warm light.
A color photograph shot through glass of an inaccessible seaside pastel interior, styled in a tropical modern fashion. Sun baked windows reflect the exterior walkway and blend with the flaring bent chrome furniture and rock work walls.
A black and white photograph examining scrollwork plaster column in the archway of a large Central American mansion.
A color photograph of a tropical sunset framed by arched windows with palm tree incursions on the side. The sun sets low over the sea and the lightly clouded sky fades through shades of blue and peach pastels.
A black and white photograph of a graffitied stairwell. Only careful analysis of the partial imagery and tag could reveal the time: needless to say it was sometime in the past forty years.
A black and white photograph of a stucco wall streaked and reframed by late afternoon shadows.
Submerged in canyons of concrete and chrome: a view upwards toward a cloud bloom.
A black and white photograph of the light caressing the understory of a forest, the dark depths of its silent sentinels, and trail through it. The bottom 3/5ths or so of the image is filled by the sun dappled trail, which is softly out of focus, while the trees fall into vaguenesses behind that highlighted slice of understory vegetation. It’s nothing much, but also so very much.
A black and white cityscape filled with trees, midcentury and skyscrapers, 19th century homes, a crane, and a football field sprawls in its fine detail like a miniature beneath a cloud layer with clear definition.
A color photograph of a colonial styled interior at night, dimly lit, four arches are stacked vertically over a stairway with cast iron banister, leading to a door. A mirror lays askew in the foreground reflecting a thin slice of scene.
A black and white photograph of a rundown market on a highway. The signs explain it’s Sunny Market, but it’s a cloudy day, the windows are boarded up and graffiti adorns every side of the building. Long grass grows in the cracked unmarked parking lot and somewhere inside past the chipped linoleum the mold in a refrigerator catch pan gradually gives up from starvation and Freon vibrates its way through the walls of its iron prison.
A black and white photograph of a dilapidated truck with a thin highlight on its edge letting it emerge subtly from the darkness. It’s not the type of truck you should get into, it’s the type of truck you have to get out of.