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InspirationPhotography

Unknown Places: Photographer Polly Tootal imagines Britain without any people

Have you ever considered a world without people? In her sombre, yet beautiful series Unknown Places, London photographer Polly Tootal loves to imagine how Britain might look if it were empty.

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Brutalist concrete tower and large residential building reflected in still water under grey sky

Capturing the less celebrated corners of the UK – so nameless they are often embedded deeply into our consciousness and then forgotten – they are spaces marked with the richness of human activity, yet bereft of human presence.

Common elements hold the project together. The images often lie upon thresholds and boundaries, liminal zones, between urban and rural, leisure and industry, lived-in and discarded. Whether suburban, urban or rural, the subjects have, for the most part, been seen from the road; discovered and observed from the inside of a car. This might be another reason for the strange familiarity the images possess, their sometimes disturbing déjà vu. Warehouses, business parks, shopping centres, waste grounds, motorways, car parks: the non-places that quietly fill up our lives, the sites of transience.

Polly explains: "The universal anonymity of these photos tells another story of modern Britain. It whispers of the silences of sterilised life, the hypermodern, super-modern, whatever you want to call it illusion that history has reached an end-point, the lie that there are no more wars here, that there are no more noises to be made, no more dramas. Banality, apathy, convenience."

Polly was born in the UK and has lived and worked in London since graduating. She read Editorial Photography under Magnum photographer Mark Power at the University of Brighton and has since won the Prix Du Public Ville D’Hyeres Photographie, Association of Photographers Award; commissioned work for the Southbank Centre & Hayward Touring Exhibition London – alongside Walker Evans Photographs 1935-1936 – and has exhibited internationally. To discover more visit www.pollytootal.com.

Via direct submission | All images courtesy of the artist

A weathered metal utility pole with directional arms stands in an empty field beside a modern brown and blue industrial building, with misty countryside visible in the distance.
Nighttime suburban landscape with a distinctive mushroom-shaped water tower illuminated against dark sky, flanked by tree-lined streets and low buildings
Red brick wall with a cream-coloured doorway at dusk, with modern buildings silhouetted against a deep blue sky
Aerial view of a new residential development with brick townhouses and apartments nestled below dramatic white chalk cliffs and green woodland
Nighttime street scene showing the illuminated Rock Christian Centre sign on a brick building, with empty wet pavement and dark structures lining the road
Receding row of concrete pillars supporting a motorway underpass with overgrown vegetation below
Empty street with a modern brick building displaying a window image, flanked by older structures under overcast skies in a British town centre
Empty high street at dusk illuminated by street lights, with shuttered shop fronts and benches on either side
Aerial view of a residential neighbourhood with modern low-rise housing blocks, green spaces and roads, overlooking industrial areas and city skyline beyond
Row of brick terraced houses with illuminated windows at night on an empty street, from Polly Tootal's Unknown Places series
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