Emptiness is Never Nothing

or Deadbuildings in Infrared

In the urban fabric of our daily lives exist structures that the eye has learned to erase. These are the non-buildings, or deadbuildings, such as the neighborhood thermal plants, the concrete husks of electrical transformers or the utilitarian shelters for waste. They are architectural footnotes, characterized by a grey, cubic aesthetic indifference.

I consider it important to note that this project departs from the deadpan aesthetic, a photographic tradition defined by emotional detachment, formal stillness, and an unemotional gaze. Typically, deadpan photography presents the subject with a flat, stubborn neutrality, forcing the viewer to fill the emotional vacuum. However, this collection performs a radical pivot. The photographs are no longer a mere record of what is, but they become a tool for augmented vision.

The core of this transformation lies in photographing in the infrared spectrum. Through a meticulous process of trichromatic reconstruction (using black-and-white infrared-sensitive film and primary color filters to create a colour image) the collection recreates the legendary and eery palette of the discontinued Kodak Aerochrome film.

The images were captured in the sharp, harsh light of late spring 2025 across the neighborhoods of Cluj-Napoca, these works demand a new mode of seeing. The artworks invite us to witness a leap from the flat realism of the everyday to an augmented, symbolic reality. In these frames, the empty space is proven to be teeming with data, and the dead-buildings are granted an afterlife in the realm of the sublime.

The force of these images consists in their banality.

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