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Lost In Context: Photography series explores the beauty that's found in absence

Benjamin Haskins is a photographer based in Cape Town, South Africa. Starting out as a traditional street photographer, he began to notice repetitive traces left in and on "the urban fabric", which he felt compelled to capture.

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A corrugated metal-roofed security structure with red and pale panels and horizontal concrete sections sits against a clear blue sky on sandy ground

Of the series, Lost In Context, he explains: "This series explores traces left in the wake of the private security industrial complex in South Africa. It could be read as a critique of the enclaved and fear-based lives so familiar in our cities, but of equal interest is the beauty in the absence.

"Each remnant of glue has been carefully and aesthetically considered, and read together reveals an alternative typography of the city. These urban hieroglyphics – part calligraphy, part Morse code – communicate an accustomed urban story. They could be read as wounds – the unsightly backside of city living – but I prefer to read them as an aesthetic and affective conversation in time and space, lost in familiar contexts.

"They are critical gestures, like a music score of urban liminality. The titles are place markers, points on a map providing an alternative reading of the spatial segregation and uncertainty still prevalent in South African cities." Discover more of this stunning series at benjaminhaskins.com.

All images courtesy of Benjamin Haskins

Industrial storage tanks and piping behind a brick wall topped with barbed wire, beneath a clear blue sky and steel overhead structures
Concrete security wall with faded adhesive marks arranged in patterns, standing before modernist residential tower blocks and grass verge
Weathered concrete wall with horizontal planks fronting a residential property with pink-washed walls and satellite dish
A residential building with a pitched tiled roof behind a boundary wall made of horizontal yellow and grey textured panels with vertical metal posts
Red brick wall with white vertical dividers and faded traces of removed signage, trees visible above
Corrugated metal fencing and concrete barriers with a weathered boat visible behind, showing traces of removal and urban decay in a South African industrial setting
Tangled black lines forming an abstract rectangular scribble on a cream wall, a remnant from removed security signage
Weathered cream-coloured wall with scattered circular holes and traces of adhesive below a security sign and residential house with dark roof
Corrugated asbestos roof with ventilation pipes above a weathered blue-painted wall and concrete security gate under clear sky
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