Saturday 8 December 2007

Non place

Queens Road Multi storey car park - Norwich

Marc Augé, a French Anthropologist, coined the phrase "non-place" to refer to places of transience that do not hold enough significance to be regarded as "places." Examples of a non-place would be a motorway, a hotel room, an airport or a supermarket.*

*Wikipedia entry for Marc Augé.

I first heard the phrase 'non-place' some tens years ago nearly when i was at University. John, the fine art photography lecturer was commenting about some images of York railway station i'd taken and it's always stayed with me. It's an interesting phrase that i think is suitable description for this picture.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Richard, I will not argue about the 'non-place' terminology. But when I look at this great composition of a place in a period of time, I think you did quite well in capturing the past, present and future! It is so empty now, but you can see the cars and people.