Liminal / Minimal / Marginal

Liminal, subliminal, sublime. How can the thinnest of iterations in our environment survive, given that, as Guy Debord described, we are a ‘society of the spectacle’, yearning after the spectacular and dismissing anything less. The ‘spectacle’ has now shifted up a gear since that French philosopher wrote his influential essay, it has now been infected by the digital, affording it omnipotent accessibility. But, can it offer access to the rarefied territory of the sublime? The spectacle has the power to dazzle the onlooker, to beckon that adrenaline rush, but the post-euphoria vacuum, left in its wake, can dump us into an emotional void. The spectacle can be a one-liner leaving us itching for more while expecting nothing less.

The screens have it. Our attention that is. Our senses, our consciousness, our desires, all hi-jacked by the digital meta-sphere. Willing victims, we revel in its cornucopia of opportunities, its empowering enablement, its irresistible offers, or it’s addictive seductions. But is something missing? Is our freedom to choose, our freedom of choice through intuition, impulse, spontaneity, or even serendipity, being severely impaired. Do we have the freedom to deviate from the digital highway and it’s relentless demands on our time? Can we wander off and explore the interstices, the borders, the peripheries of our world, using our raw senses, revel in a physical interaction with our environment – only with difficulty and through determined effort – when the digital world offers its easy, vicarious alternative. Photographers have enjoyed forays into this territory – the peripheral, the liminal, the marginal, ever since the technology was invented. Witness Eugene Atget’s depopulation of Paris through his long-exposure images in the 19th Century. Aaron Siskind’s semi-abstract images of peeling paintwork and derelict billboards in 1950’s New York, Luisa Lambri’s photographs of arbitrary details in iconic modernist buildings. Heidi Specker’s images of brutalist facades. All of these works highlight features of our environment that would normally pass us by. We are enriched by experiences that diverge from those that are prescribed through our interface with the digital sphere. As we access and amass more knowledge, the more superficial it becomes, meaning has been superseded by exigency, the relevant by the exotic. and the aesthetic by the ostentatious. Shallowness has replaced depth, and awareness has been clouded by compulsion.

As we’re spoon-fed daily rations of the spectacular in that digital sphere whose domain we survey on our ever-present screens, we run the risk of perceptual anomie – its infection is contagious and leads to irreversible burn-out – no rash, no fever, no dizziness, but more a diluted vertigo that leaves us wondering where the ground has gone! But there is a cure for this – a therapeutic dose of the liminal, subliminal sublime. A realisation that the reality of the real still exists, out there in the peripheral wilderness, can do wonders for our sense of self, a sense of self that can become wizened, leached away by the digital rain whose torrents wash across our brains from day to day, from moment to moment, giving us little pause for thought.

In ‘Liminal / Liminal / Marginal’, a range of therapists offer their photographic balm, images of peripheral, tangential, sometimes weird, and often mysterious realities that test our awareness of our day to day environments beyond those screens whose distractions deny us any glimpses of the sublime. They are elusive, and the viewer needs to pay extra heed, but there are little sparks of the sublime that glitter briefly here and there, before moving on in these images, their after-images giving the viewer pause for thought and room to wonder.

Each artist here, and I think I’m right in assuming that this group of photographers consider themselves artists, has his or her own agenda, of course, but nearly all share a common sensitivity for those unsung aspects of our world that have become a peripheral blur, brushed to the margins by the incessant and insistent glare of the digital world. Their incipient message being, “look away to find yourself”, or at least a fresh perspective on your place in the world. Samuel Beckett had something, we don’t have the time or freedom any more to ‘Wait for Godot’, but we can share the concerns of Vladimir and Estragon as, in their, now, pejorative manner, they dwelt on the states of reality that, while they were, elusively, just beyond their reach, nevertheless had substance. In the margins of our consciousness we can experience the fluctuations in the states of being that signal reality, as an adventure. However, the illusionary states of being in the workings of the digital world have not a jot of reality, but, on the contrary, are an incessant flux of insubstantiality in search of an ordered chaos – yet we are beginning to stake our lives and destinies on those illusionary states of being.

Used as a tool, digital technology might seem to be freeing, but what price are we paying for that freedom, and can we really predict what we’re being freed into? We might well be viewed as latter day Luddites if we press home this view of the burgeoning digital revolution. Better, however, to be intrigued by the rich complexity of our sentient world, than be sucked into the illusory and synthetic states of the digital world. While admitting that this essay was written with the aid of digital technology, at least an awareness of that fact maintains a stable sense of orientation. The bottom line is, the images in ‘Liminal / Minimal / Marginal are presented here to be enjoyed for their exploration of that liminal reality that we often pass by without noticing, feel their heft. Feel their pull as they reveal those hints of the sublime so often hidden on the fringes of our daily lives. Once we experience a synergy with these places, scenes or objects depicted here, then perhaps a new perspective on our world will open out and elicit a change in consciousness, which, however slight, might well enrich our lives.

Roy Exley, Curator
October 2026