Placelessness
Lauren Horsman
There are places that have been labeled as landmarks to establish parts of a city or location where an event occurred. With those landmarks, we are able to easily save these memories in our minds to later locate and identify them. These places have become important to our sense of geography and how they define our society. However, within and around these important places are placeless places; locations that have personal meanings that just as significantly contribute to our experience of the world around us. These places are collectively less memorable or overlooked, but that doesn’t make them any less important. There are many places that mean something to one person but not to anyone else. The spot you had your first kiss, or broke your arm, where you heard some unfortunate news or a place that makes your heart stop—these are areas of personal symbolism, they are frequently temporary, but still hold a certain memory. These places shape the landscape of the world for you and that is what makes them important, makes them monumental.
This project collects narratives of these placeless places while documenting them with images that suggest their simultaneous familiarity and universality. What you’re looking at is part of a large archive of areas that surround our daily life.