Many of the photos in Vincent J. Stokers‘ series Heterotopia: The Tragic Fall look like they were snapped on the set of a previously undiscovered Stanley Kubrick film. These abandoned spaces found around the world — an unlikely mixture of control centers, theaters, bath houses, and spots we can’t place — as Stoker explains it, are “detached from the commonly established relation to time and have entered a temporality of their own. The linear and sovereign time of the watch is replaced with the slow, soft and suspended time of ruins, with the one of the humanist accumulation of the stored knowledge, or with the ever-frozen time of photography.” Thanks to a combination of strong lines, geometric shapes, and faded colors, the resulting images are perversely beautiful, while possessing a magical narrative quality — the viewer can’t help but imagine what once was before the decay. Click through to check out his work, which we spotted thanks to our friends over at iGNANT.
Photo credit: Vincent J. Stoker
Photo credit: Vincent J. Stoker
Photo credit: Vincent J. Stoker
Photo credit: Vincent J. Stoker
Photo credit: Vincent J. Stoker
Photo credit: Vincent J. Stoker
Photo credit: Vincent J. Stoker
Photo credit: Vincent J. Stoker
Photo credit: Vincent J. Stoker
Photo credit: Vincent J. Stoker
Photo credit: Vincent J. Stoker
Photo credit: Vincent J. Stoker
Photo credit: Vincent J. Stoker
Photo credit: Vincent J. Stoker
Photo credit: Vincent J. Stoker