In the stillness of empty buildings, Magda Biernat finds human traces. While cropping out location and context, she looks for the soul in the modern built environment.
“I’m always drawn to spaces and structures and compositions that are void of people,” Ms. Biernat said. “It’s an intuition. It’s something that I see and I have to get.”
Although her clean, carefully-composed photographs suggest a sense of remove, she speaks warmly of her absent human subjects and the rooms through which they have passed.
“In abandoned spaces I am always intrigued by, and think about, the past of how this place existed,” Ms. Biernat said. “And I’m just thinking about what has happened, why it doesn’t exist any more. What happened to the people who’ve been there, and why did they leave? And why did they leave so many things behind?”