A Photographic Study of the Human Trace in Non-Places
I have maintained a love-hate relationship with motorway service stations for most of my life. As a child, they were sites of wonder—the neon-lit portals to a holiday, the literal start of something magical. In my teens and early twenties, they became survival hubs during my years of hitchhiking. I recall the biting chill of Gordano, near Bristol, where the M5 splits. I spent countless hours there with a cardboard sign, my physical presence slowly wearing down the grass on the verge, leaving a temporary mark on the slip road as I waited for a driver heading North.
In my thirties and forties, as a commercial driver, these stations became purely utilitarian—a necessity for fuel, caffeine, and relief. But the focus of my gaze has shifted again. Now, traveling by motorcycle or driving an electric vehicle, the “splash and dash” era is over. The charging port demands a forced pause, a return to the state of extended waiting.
This project is a photographic document of that wait. Moving away from traditional landscape views, I am focusing on the subtle physical changes we impose on these environments. I am interested in the “human trace”:
- Desire Lines: The unofficial footpaths worn into the mud and grit where people bypass the planned pavement.
- The Texture of Use: The polished sheen on a door handle, the scuffed paint of a bollard, or the oil-rainbows in a puddle where thousands of engines have dripped onto the same patch of concrete.
- Ephemeral Evidence: Footprints in the sand of a construction zone or the discarded charging receipts caught in a perimeter fence.
These are the “memories of the feet” left in the most unloved of places. We all spend time in these interstitial spaces, but I have frequented them more than most. By documenting the erosion, the stains, and the paths carved by repetition, I am seeking to prove that even in the most sterile “non-place,” the human spirit leaves a permanent, if subtle, mark upon the land.
