This book presents a critical and aesthetic defence of “non-place” as an act of cultural reclamation. Through the restorative properties of photography, it re-conceptualises the cultural significance of non-place. The non-place is often referred to as “wasteland”, and is usually avoided. The sites investigated in this book are located where access and ownership are often ambiguous or in dispute; they are places of cultural forgetting. Drawing on the author’s own photographic research-led practice, as well as material from photographers such as Ed Ruscha, Joel Sternfeld and Richard Misrach, this study employs a deliberately allusive intertexuality to offer a unique insight into the contested notions surrounding landscape representation. Ultimately, it argues that the non-place has the potential to reveal a version of England that raises questions about identity, loss, memory, landscape valorisation, and, perhaps most importantly, how we are to arrive at a more meaningful place.

'Giphantia' is a novel written by the French author Charles-François Tiphaigne de La Roche. The story begins by following an unnamed man who desires to explore the vast and dangerous landscape of Guinea. Despite the potential dangers, he sets out with supplies to sustain himself and a compass to guide him. After two days of traveling, he encounters only dried up shrubs and rocks, but on the third day, a high wind stirs up the surface of the sand and creates a dangerous hurricane. The whirlwinds become so intense that they obscure the light of the sun and the air is filled with clouds of dust and sparks of fire.

An ever-increasing proportion of our lives is spent in supermarkets, airports and hotels, on motorways or in front of TVs, computers and cash machines. This invasion of the world by what Marc Augé calls "non-space" results in a profound alteration of awareness: something we perceive, but only in a partial and incoherent manner. Augé uses the concept of "supermodernity" to describe a situation of excessive information and excessive space. In this fascinating essay he seeks to establish an intellectual armature for an anthropology of supermodernity.

Non places are familiar territory yet very often overlooked. Insignificant in that we don't store them to our memory, We simply pass through, remaining anonymous along the way. They are neither our starting point nor our destination. Non Places are locations of convenience, transition, consumerism and consumption. These areas are too insignificant to be considered 'places'. My aim is to photograph these 'non places' with an objective approach.

"Examines three projects in late nineteenth-century scientific photography: the endeavors of Alphonse Bertillon, Francis Galton, and Etienne-Jules Marey. Develops new theoretical perspectives on the history of photographic technology, as well as the history of scientific imaging more generally"--

"Examining the themes of presence and absence, the relationship between photography and theatre, history and death, these 'reflections on photography' begin as an investigation into the nature of photographs. Then, as Barthes contemplates a photograph of his mother as a child, the book becomes an exposition of his own mind."--Alibris.