What if you woke up one day, walked outside your home, down the street, and over to your favorite café to find you were the last person in the human race left standing? What would your city look like?
What would be the top three things you would do first if you woke up and found that you were the only person left in the world? Would you break into the grocery store and steal food? Go on the ultimate shopping spree at the mall? Or break into your next door neighbor’s and go for a skinny dip in their pool?
What would your city look like if the entire population was wiped out? Would it look like these pictures? Two artists known only as Lucie and Simon used a technique utilized by NASA to analyze stars to create powerful yet eerie photos for a series called “Silent World.” The artists utilized a “special neutral density filter” that provides exposures which are extra-long and actually removes any moving objects, including people, from the scene.
Every photo is totally empty except for maybe one or two people. Major cities including New York, Paris, and Beijing look haunting as these bustling streets are empty. Who knew just how quiet Times Square could actually look.
And while there are times when these locations do look as though all life has deserted them, this only often happens late at night and very early in the morning. All these photographs were taken during daytime hours!
While we continue to hope the apocalypse is nowhere near (let’s all shake our fists collectively at the Mayan prophesies), are these pictures a strong prophesy of what is to come when the apocalypse does happen?
For information on how you can combat the apocalypse, check out some great end-of-the-world fashion or look into how to build your own zombie-proof house. (Because it is going to be the zombies that wipe out most of the population…right?!)
