I think this blog is now concluded. It meant to capture the nice illusion that there is beauty in the emptiness and pointlessness of chunks of space-time that no one belongs to, or that I don’t belong to at any rate. In part because I was raised during the 1980’s in a socialist suburban environment in the south of Europe, it is no surprise that I should find that in ugliness sometimes. I have grown to take a mild, if sad, delight in looking at parking lots, desolated swimming pools, abandoned buildings, etc. — irrespective of their ideological distribution, if that makes any sense.

The waste of human powers shown by some of these photos can have a powerful impact in one’s spirit if you take time to think of it. Given the pastoral Weltanschauung that sustained my whole adolescence I am also attracted by the memory of a life of simplicity transmitted by some of the pictures. Here’s something striking and philosophically interesting: liking these photos (of things I’ve never saw in my life) is a funny way of liking parts of my own past.

There is no special reason for this particular choice of photos except that they fall under the explanation just given, and that I came across them between early October and mid November of 2011 on Tumblr. I thank all the photographers, tumblr and flickr users, which contributed unknowingly to my distraction. Perhaps in the future I will curate another photo collection. (This is not likely.) Nevertheless, I want to recommend Dream Me Up, where you’ll find similar forms of beauty.

H.B.