Passing Place

The phrase ‘Non-Place’ was first coined by French Anthropologist Marc Augé. It refers to anthropological spaces of transience that do not hold enough significance to be regarded as ‘places’. For me, these ‘Non-Places’ exist everywhere on a route that I regularly travel between Leicestershire and Gloucestershire. For this reason, I decided to use the road joining these locations, the Roman-built A46, as the place on which to explore. I came across areas of un-ease; landscape that have fallen by the wayside – scruffy, unloved, forgotten. Certainly not the idealised English countryside that perhaps the passer-by would come to expect. Passing Place delves into these edgelands; weird spaces in which towns and communities end; however, the trace of man is still very much apparent across the landscape. It is this ‘trace’ that I ultimately studied, exploring the identity (or lack of it) in these places. After all, who cares about the identity of the roadside when you are only trying to reach your destination?