Tenterhooks: Liminal Space

By Steve Bennett | November 5, 2020

This composite image, which I created a year ago, was meant to depict the concept of being suspended in liminal space. The crosswalk is the ultimate symbol of liminality. When you’re in a crosswalk, you’re nowhere, really, trying to get from one block to another. In “Liminal Space,” there is no discernible destination, no “here.”

 

Steve Bennett, “Liminal Space” New York City 2019

 

Today, I feel that there is no “here,” either, in terms of where we go as a nation so divided, how we survive a raging pandemic, and how we foster understanding when everyone is so angry.

I believe that “Liminal Space” has the same quality of disharmony and confusion as the experimental film Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance. It conveys a sense of nervous energy, of a mind about to dissolve into irreconcilable shards, of a world on the verge of exploding. It is an image of what our country is going through right now.

 

Copyright © 2020 Steve Bennett
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2 Comments

  1. Sharon Oakes on November 5, 2020 at 6:45 pm

    These are definitely surreal times! Your photo captures that feeling perfectly! It makes me think of the Beatles song “Nowhere Man”! Well done!

    • Steve Bennett on November 5, 2020 at 6:58 pm

      Thank you so much for the kind comment, Sharon. And yes, “Nowhere Man!”

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