THE EMPTY SPACES
PERSONAL ABSOLUTE SPACE POINT
Empty Spaces is an inquiry into presence and absence, time and space, silence and structure. Through photography, I seek not merely to capture a scene but to reveal the emotional and metaphysical undercurrents that shape our interaction with the built environment. This series is a meditation on architectural isolation, constructed in response to modern cities that grow more vertical, fragmented, and emotionally distant. I explore liminal sites — concrete corridors, underpasses, abandoned façades — where silence speaks louder than any human presence. These photographs do not document urban architecture in a conventional sense; rather, they dissect the emotional texture of forgotten or overlooked corners of the city. Absence becomes palpable, a character in itself.
The series emerged In the surreal stillness of lockdown London, where deserted streets and cloistered interiors revealed a new intimacy between solitude and space. Each image functions as a “personal absolute space point” — a temporal coordinate where existence feels both suspended and deeply resonant. Borrowed from physics, the idea of an “absolute space point” refers to an unchanging reference within the shifting field of events. Translated into a personal register, these moments become anchors of memory: guiding us back through time, enabling reflection, and marking the hidden intersections of self and space.
Formally, the photographs chronicle a transition from reality into a realm that is both timeless and enigmatic. Empty expanses rendered in pristine white echo a paradoxical amalgamation of restlessness and serenity, while abstract strokes of light and shadow, akin to painted lines, guide architectural rhythms across dimensions of time and space.
Central to this work is my use of Inverse Chrono-Spatial Axis Shift (ICSAS), a photographic intervention that departs from linear notions of time and fixed space. Through long exposures, deliberate camera movements, and digital inversion, I manipulate geometry, reflections, and spatial relationships to suggest alternate dimensions. Past, present, and future collapse into singular, flattened frames, unraveling modernity’s myth of endless forward motion. Light becomes thought material, architecture becomes emotional architecture, and perception itself is unsettled.
The work is shaped by my lived experience between New Delhi and London — two cities marked by rapid transformation, historical weight, and contrasting spatial sensibilities. My lens is informed by postcolonial displacement, ecological fragility, and personal longing. I am drawn to the emotional residue of places: what remains when progress erases memory, what histories fall silent in the pursuit of architectural ambition.
In an age of overstimulation, Empty Spaces leans toward minimalism — not as an aesthetic choice alone, but as a philosophical gesture. It asks the viewer to slow down, to dwell in stillness, and to listen to what remains unsaid. Emptiness here is not void; it is full of echoes. These photographs become sites of introspection, fragments of a larger dialogue about disconnection, memory, and the fragile relationship between humans and the spaces we inhabit.
To extend this encounter beyond the still image, I invite viewers to invert the colours of their phone screens while engaging with the work. This inversion transforms the images, mirroring the conceptual core of the series: a shift in perception where time folds, motion unfolds, and space becomes both present and spectral. In this way, the viewer becomes an active participant in navigating spatial memory, opening new ways of witnessing the unseen.
