Opacity
Twenty years of large-format photography inside abandoned asylums, power stations and factories, catalogued site by site.
Opens in a new tab. We do not control this site and it may have changed since we catalogued it.
How to get the most from it
Opacity sits in Liminal Spaces under Weird, filed as rabbit hole.
- Open it when the evening is free. It has no natural stopping point.
- Use a laptop or desktop computer — we file it as desktop only.
- It works with the sound off, so it is fine on a train or in a quiet office.
- No account needed — you can start without signing up.
- Go in expecting something beautiful and unsettling.
About this category: Photographs of places with nobody in them: dead malls, empty pools, corridors at 3am. An aesthetic that has no right to be this affecting.
Good for
- A long evening with nothing planned
- Looking at something lovely
- A little creeping unease
- A quiet break at your desk
- Trying it with zero commitment
Opacity: quick answers
Is Opacity free?
Yes. Opacity is free to use and needs no account.
Do I need an account to use Opacity?
No. You can use Opacity without signing up for anything.
Does Opacity work on a phone?
Not well. We file Opacity as desktop only, so open it on a laptop or desktop computer.
Is Opacity safe for work?
Yes, we file it as safe for work. It also works muted.
How long does Opacity take?
We file it as "Rabbit hole": Clear your evening. We warned you.
More in Liminal Spaces
All 13 in Liminal SpacesPhotographs of corridors, swimming pools and hotel lobbies with nobody in them, which is far more affecting than that sounds.
- 10 min
Photographic essays on ruined institutions that are far more interested in why the places closed than in the broken glass.
- 10 min
Guided write-ups of the city's empty hospitals, airfields and amusement parks, complete with directions and a note on the fence situation.
- 10 min
Field reports and photographs of American shopping centres in decline, written by people who cared about this long before it was an aesthetic.
- 1 hr+
Same mood: beautiful
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Open-source emoji set drawn by design students, free to use, and in several places noticeably better than the defaults.
- 10 min
Gallery of Processing and p5.js sketches where every piece runs in the page and the source is right there to fork.
- 1 hr+
- Desktop
Colourises black-and-white photographs, then lets you steer the result by describing the colours you wanted in words.
- 2 min
Keep exploring
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