The Space Between Being And Nothing

By Edge of Humanity Magazine, September 11, 2021

Photographer Emily Allen is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this photo essay. From the project ‘The Space Between Being and Nothing’. To see Emily’s body of work, click on any image.

In the Timaeus, Plato describes the creation of our universe. For him, creation is a process of becoming: a transition into being. This happens in khora, a “third kind” of space from which all things arise. It is neither formed nor formless, visible nor invisible; it is a placeless place. At its core, creation is a paradox. It is familiar and strange, and it is found and invented. The process of crafting a world is something that cannot be defined by any one thing; it is the space between being and nothing.

As I navigated the world of digital manipulation for the first time, the process felt to me as though I was building a photograph that didn’t really exist. The digital space, while it is in a sense real, is also not; you cannot touch it or ever fully exist in it. A digital photograph is not a tangible object, simply a string of data. It, like the khora, exists in a placeless place. Reality collapses in these images as the photographs leave the real and enter the unreal – lights blur and colors shift, creating something new out of the destruction.