Silence speaks volumes: Why empty spaces are as important as filled ones

Selene Interiors | South Perth Project
Photography by @jennafrenchphoto

Designers and photographers talk about space in the same way painters talk about colour, or musicians talk about notes: it’s what we’re shaping to create something meaningful. But artistic design and photography is not just about what’s there; some of the most memorable expressions are defined by what’s not.

It’s counterintuitive; we think of design as the art of putting things in a room. But the most striking photos of the best designs so often rely just as much on what’s left out. It’s like silence in a conversation, it holds weight: it lets everything that was said before it settle, and makes what’s to come next feel deliberate. The same is true of designing and composing for negative space, to invoke a sense of pause, rather than shout for the viewer’s attention.

For me, as a photographer, I tend to find that these visually “quieter” spaces offer a rare and welcome opportunity for the eyes to rest. In a world overwhelmed by visual excess, it’s the reason photos balanced with negative space just feel nice to look at. When composing a frame that is still yet to feel right, I find myself looking first for what can be removed, not for what could be added. An enduring philosophy in my own style and in how I approach my work is that “perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

Negative space is rarely an oversight; it tells a story of restraint — one which elevates the design details that are there. That’s what’s most conducive to very good architectural storytelling, and a photo series which has you thinking, “I can’t look away!”