[South Calgary, Calgary]

Zero-Point

During lockdown last December, I began taking pictures of vacant commercial and industrial spaces.

The building in this picture drew my attention because of its unusual sign, which was a white blank during the day but at night would become visible. I eventually decided to photograph it, and then I began noticing other vacant spaces and realized I could probably make a series.

In the day I would use Google Maps and Streetview to find and mark every commercial/industrial building in Calgary, and then most nights I would drive to visit the spaces and photograph those with lights on, eventually visiting all of them.

I found over 100 vacant spaces with lights on and visible interiors (or at least an interesting exterior), and that was only about a tenth of the overall vacant spaces I saw (most were papered over or had no lights on). The cause for the vacancies were at times ambiguous and not all were shuttered businesses: some were moving, renovating or the spaces appeared to have been recently leased.

Lockdown made for so little traffic on the road that I could make images without light trails from cars reflecting on the glass (a common problem), even on what are usually the busiest streets. Often I would drive down major roads and be the only car on the road for as far as I could see in either direction.

For me, this work feels like a terminal extension to my previous Invisible City series, and has even more of the empty-presence ambience I had been searching for in that series.

I’m going to post (probably periodically) a selection from the series, starting with this shot, the first I took in the series.

A7RIV pixel shift, Zeiss Loxia 25mm, custom E100 slide film profile.

© All Rights Reserved

Manchester Industrial, Calgary.

Zero-Point: A series of vacant commercial/industrial spaces photographed during the height of lockdown.

A7RIV pixel shift, Zeiss Loxia 25mm, custom E100 slide film profile.

© All Rights Reserved

Radisson Heights, Calgary.

Zero-Point: A series of vacant commercial/industrial spaces photographed during the height of lockdown.

A7RIV pixel shift, Zeiss Loxia 25mm, custom E100 slide film profile.

© All Rights Reserved

Signal Hill, Calgary.

Zero-Point: A series of vacant commercial/industrial spaces photographed during the height of lockdown.

A7RIV pixel shift, Zeiss Loxia 25mm, custom E100 slide film profile.

© All Rights Reserved

Royal Vista, Calgary.

Zero-Point: A series of vacant commercial/industrial spaces photographed during the height of lockdown.

A7RIV pixel shift, Zeiss Loxia 25mm, custom E100 slide film profile.

© All Rights Reserved