Liminal spaces are a term used to describe images of locations (usually indoors) which are usually depicted with many individuals, now in a transitional state where said people are not there, such as a classroom during dusk or hotel hallrooms. Many liminal spaces also hold a vague nostaligic feeling to the viewer known as anemoia which is easily triggered by showing the viewer images of prominent locations from their childhood such as classrooms and malls and helps make the images that much more disorienting. Lastly, all of these spaces are robbed of their main purpose and function. The combination of these 3 factors lead to a comforting or weird state of a location, almost as if these places where lost in space and time.
My Own Liminal Space Photos
After taking photos of liminal spaces for the better part of 1 year by now, I have ammassed a decently large gallery of photos which are shown below
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When taking said photos, I like to keep a couple rules in mind in order to improve the effect of the images:
1. Search for spots usually depicted with a lot of people or human activity.
2. Dim down the main light source in the photo in order to lower the highlights.
3. Look for spaces with repeating or symmetrical architecture, this helps in making the photos that much more surreal and disorienting for the viewer, yet in some cases, exceptions might work just as well.
4.You ideally want to take the photos during the middle of the night, dusk or dawn, as the increase in light found during the day makes my 2nd point essentially invalid and the increase in people makes it harder to search for good spots.
5. All my photos are shot on a samsung zflip 5, which although ok, should actually be taken on hardware with really grainy and low resolution cameras such as old flip phones from the early 2000's or the nintendo 3/ds/i cameras, if you do not have said hardware, then you can digitally alter the photo itself using online software such as pixlr, photopea or simple grain adding tools to meet said requirements
There is something so special about these types of images which not even its own definition manages to properly convey, perhaps it might be the blurry nostalgic value they have or maybe its the somewhat comforting loneliness they show (now that i think about it, it might be both lol). Either way, liminal spaces have become really important for me:).
Btw I have a old part of my site which will no longer be updated related to liminal spaces (its not really polished nor well made but i still think it should be shown here
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