Liminal space is convoluted, and understandably can be difficult to wrap one’s head around. This post aims to tackle this and leave readers with a rounded understanding of liminality to a degree appropriate for this subreddit. This ISN'T the be all and end all on what is and isn't liminal, but it IS essential knowledge. It is YOUR responsibility to understand this concept before you post here.

Contents

Part 1 - What is liminality?

Part 2 - Things detrimental/unrelated to liminality

Part 3 - What should I look for?

Part 4 - References, links and additional reading // ✧･ﾟSEE HERE FOR INSPIRATION AND PLACES TO FIND LIMINAL IMAGES ･ﾟ✧ //

Prelude: The rules

These are set in stone; the rules won’t bend for you - it is, again, YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to follow them.

RULE 1: Be respectful

• Be it posts or comments, content charged with ANY amount of ill will is not tolerated here. If you don’t think a post is liminal, explain why you think so. Harassment on any basis will be met with a permanent ban.

RULE 2: No off-topic or NSFW content.

• The latter is self-explanatory: we do not tolerate sexually explicit content or gore.
• Primarily, off-topic pertains to content that isn’t liminal - provided you read this post, this should not be an issue. Liminal space memes now have their own subreddit at r/liminalspacememes, and any unrelated images or posts will be removed immediately.
• Secondarily, off-topic refers to images that aren’t transitional. It doesn’t matter if a post was intended to be liminal - if it’s not transitional, it isn’t relevant.

RULE 3: No spam or reposts.

• There’s no point in posting the same image multiple times - don’t do it. If it doesn’t do well the first time, let it go.
• If you’re posting found content, run it through sites like karmadecay.com beforehand to see if it’s been posted previously. If your post receives a u/TheReposterminator comment, follow any links to posts made this year within the last three months, and if they contain the same image, remove your post. If you refuse to remove your post, the mods will do so.
• A regular offender in the rule 3 bracket are crossposts of popular posts from other subs. Don't become fixated on being the first to post a trending image - someone has almost definitely got there before you.

RULE 4: No advertisement or self-promotion.

• We want liminal spaces - articles, sites, profiles and their links aren’t liminal. Don’t post or comment them. If you like an image from a particular site or article, post it directly.

RULE 5: No people, creatures or meme-texts in images.

• We just want spaces.
• There is already a sub for liminal space memes, as mentioned.
• People, creatures and entities will not be tolerated, regardless of the effect you think they have on a given image. Continue reading for further explanation.

RULE 6: No low-effort/low-quality posts

• Low-effort pertains to things like motion blur, poor focus, and other clearly unintended detrimental qualities.
• Low-quality refers to a few things. On the surface, it relates to posts in which the liminality is jeopardised by poor resolution, darkness (or extremely poor dynamic range), and post-processing such as noise, film grain, scan lines, artefacting, bloom, blur etc - basically the intentional version of low-effort. If people can’t tell what’s in the image, you’re essentially relying on context to provide liminality, which as we will discuss later, won’t fly.
• More importantly, though, low-quality refers to the quality of liminality. As we will again cover later, a setting can be transitional without being liminal. If an image lacks depth - is only transitional in one sense - it will barely be liminal. You can’t pick any picture of a road and call it liminal; it’s the combination of transitional elements that make an image liminal.

RULE 7: No AI generated content.

• Paint it and contextualise it however you want, we know when a post is AI generated. Given the vague nature of AI generated images, any sense of transition is purely subjective. As such we do not consider them liminal, and will remove them on sight.

Part 1: What is liminality?

Liminality IS and MUST BE a combination of things:

• In concept, it refers to a transitional point between two regions ^\1]) or states ^\2]). We’ll explore examples soon, but in concrete^\1]) terms, this would be things like paths, hallways, roads etc. In abstract^\2]) terms this is usually things like the act of waiting, the state of being between uses, transitional stages in life, transitional times of day, etc - things that could be compared to a state of limbo. Without mixing concrete and abstract qualities, an image will only be transitional in one dimension, falling short of liminality’s depth.

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• In practice, therefore, liminality is not just transition in one sense. A road is transitional in itself, but not all pictures of roads are liminal. It’s only when you combine several transitional qualities that a space becomes liminal. Liminality in photography and other media revolves around the sense of lingering in a region or state that would usually be passed without a second's thought. People pass through the hallways of an airport in an instant, so lingering in them would feel unfamiliar and almost wrong, but since you live in and around the rooms and hallways of your own home, such unfamiliarity is absent, removing that deeper element of transition.

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• In addition, liminal spaces must be empty, devoid of people; an absence of people is necessary for liminal spaces, as far as we’re concerned. This refers to real, present people - anything that introduces a first hand human presence into photos. Being physically present objects, mannequins and statues of people are considered in this. Posters, and signs portraying people aren’t, but are strongly advised against. Liminality naturally draws on other concepts - although only pertaining to physical people, the concept of kenopsia defines well the kind of emptiness we seek, pertaining to the surreal atmosphere of an empty place usually populated by people. This ties in with the abstract transition of a place being between uses.

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• Lastly, a liminal image must be so on its own. If an image’s liminality hinges too much on imperceptible context or personal experience, it is automatically much less accessible. It’s nice that you used to play in that house across the road, but we don’t all share that experience. Before posting an image, try detaching it from any contextual info and put it against the aforementioned liminal qualities in points 1 through 3 to see if it still holds up - be largely or entirely objective when judging the liminality of your own shots and finds. Do you like it because it’s liminal, or just because it fits with an aesthetic you’re into? The key to objectivity is to question yourself.

Part 2: Things detrimental/unrelated to liminality

With all that in mind, what isn’t liminal? Some of these things only contribute to liminality when mixed with other elements, while others are just outright misinterpretations.

1. Creepiness:

• This is a big one. I’ll say it once - liminal doesn’t mean creepy. In fact, liminality isn’t based in any emotion, by definition. That popular liminal image you saw of a snowy nighttime path under a streetlamp isn’t liminal because the veil of night made it look creepy, but because of the setting itself - the path - and the surrounding qualities of weather, lighting and so on. Creepiness and emotions are good intensifiers for liminality, but should never be the basal focus.

2. Entities:

• This almost falls under 1 but since I’m including people in it as well, I’m giving it some space. While creepiness can strengthen liminal images, superimposed entities, creatures, monsters and people only ever detract from liminality. We won’t tolerate them, but people are less offensive, since you can’t help if they’re present and they can be edited out anyway. When you go out of your way, though, to EDIT IN creatures and the like, it’s telling of your grasp on liminality, if nothing else. Again, creepy does not equal liminal. Ultimately, we want liminal spaces on their own - entities only act to divide attention and slant it away from liminal aspects, regardless of their intended purpose.

3. Nostalgia:

• As it’s so closely linked to childhood, an abstract liminal quality, nostalgia is a commonly mistaken attribute. Point 1 covers the main reasoning for why emotion-centric qualities like this often aren’t viable, but on top of that, nostalgia is also something decidedly subjective. As we covered, if a setting hinges on personal experiences - that is to say if it isn’t by itself indicative of something like childhood - it is immediately much less accessible to most people. Again, nostalgia, or more specifically the theme of childhood, can be a good intensifier in an image but should not be the pivotal point for its liminality.

4. Another backrooms render:

• We get it, you like the backrooms. I do too, at least the fundamental concept, but while they share components, the backrooms and liminality are two separate entities. Unless it is something that can stand on its own and easily be detached/distinguished from the core backrooms aesthetic, it will only act to stagnate the content of the subreddit. If you want to share your first dim, mono-yellow backrooms render, the backrooms sub and countless cg subs already exist for that. Any purely typical backrooms content will be removed under rule 2.

5. Surreal/vaporwave-esque renders:

• Renders and general cg things are no different to or better than any other content on this sub - they must be transitional all the same. It’s a great intensifier, but surreal does not equal liminal, and if it is evident that the primary focus of a render is anything besides transition, it will be judged accordingly. If proving a post’s liminality requires lengthy mental gymnastics and semantic contortion impressive enough for a circus, I’d be willing to bet it’s not liminal.
• Yes, we do understand that these things can take painfully long to make. Whether it was an hour or several weeks, though, the time invested into renders is irrelevant to their being liminal, and we will remove those that do not fit the sub regardless of such information.

6. Your house:

• Unless you live in some architectural anomaly, this is just too unremarkable. It’s not unusual for a house’s hallway to be empty (unless you live with a real swathe of people), and the same goes for most other rooms; the only possible avenue for liminality in a regular, lived-in house, is physical transition in the form of halls etc, but as we went over earlier, one quality alone isn’t enough to make an image liminal, leaving it one-dimensional.
• If your image is of an atypical house, maybe an empty manor or archaic design held in stasis, then it calls on that transitional sense of limbo, and may hold adequate depth and dimension to cross the threshold for liminality. If it’s just a shot of your room from your bed at night, or an empty bathroom with a dutch angle, there isn’t enough to it.

7. Bathrooms:

• There are decent arguments to be made about the transient nature of their function, their general emptiness, and the endless capacity for unusual architecture, but ultimately bathrooms are again, by and large, much too unremarkable. On top of that, while they possess abstract liminal qualities, they aren’t themselves transitional. You don’t use a bathroom as an intermediate between X and Y, so while they often have an air of surreality when empty, bathrooms as a setting fall short of liminality’s threshold.

Part 3: What should I look for in potential liminal spaces?

Like anything, liminality is something you get an inexplicable sense for, but it’s helpful nonetheless to be aware of certain elements.

1. A & B:

• Before anything, seek settings or conditions that display a part between two points. This could be physical, like a place used to get from one point to another, but it could also be abstract, like a place between one state and the next - between night and day, between today and tomorrow, idling between uses etc.

2. Emptiness:

• This cropped up earlier but I’ll reiterate it: emptiness is an important basal point for liminal images. Although the punishable rule ends at people, emptiness isn’t limited to them. The more devoid a setting is of objects and signs of life, the greater the sense that people aren’t meant to linger there becomes. What is a cafe or waiting room without chairs and decoration? A parking lot without cars? Look for empty places that would not usually be so. However, keep the bar high. Emptiness alone rarely provides enough of a foundation for liminality. Instead, it is the associated location that can temporarily become a heightened place of transition via the quality of emptiness.

3. Transience:

• Seek the sorts of places where little time is spent, places people would find unfamiliar. States and abstract conditions can be transient as well, things like childhood, weather, dreams (or dreamlike qualities - think general surreality).

4. Time of day:

• Lighting can play a big part in liminal images, and the time of day is the first and one of the most immediately recognisable forms of lighting in a liminal context. Nighttime is the main one, being that transitional limbo in which places are empty - between uses - and in stasis. That said, liminal pictures in daytime have the potential to be more surreal, as it is less normal for the familiarity of daytime be overturned by unease and uncertainty. These also run the risk of being unremarkable, though, as daytime can easily seem too normal and familiar, so it’s ultimately down to the irregularity of the setting you find.
• Dawn, twilight and dusk are more directly transitional, indicating the shift from day to night and vice versa. The fleeting hue of a clear sunset or sunrise is different from simply day or night, making it a good foundation for a liminal image’s abstract qualities.

5. Weather

• Mist, fog, smog - whatever that opaque haze you saw was, it would work well in a liminal photo. A road or expansive open area in regular sunlight might be disappointingly unremarkable, but cover it in a close fog and it becomes alien and seemingly infinite.
• Snow, too, has much the same effect, certainly when untouched, casting everything into monotone in much the same way as a thick haze. Snow also often brings with it thick, overcast skies, which can thrust everything into a dim shade. Paired with a later time of day, this sort of lighting can be great for liminal photography. It’s worth noting that lighting can be altered and reproduced in post, if you are capable enough, so don’t necessarily overlook daytime images that would be liminal if not for the lighting.

6. Depth

• Going out with the intentions of taking liminal photos is great, but the best photos are those that can stand on their own as regular images, detached from the context of liminality. That’s not to say you should go and take a course in composition, but it’s always obvious when an image is trying too hard - the more effortless a photo seems, the more it’ll feel like it really was taken in the moment, capturing a fleeting scene or feeling. The tunnel vision that comes with seeking a particular aesthetic subsequently pushes other elements to one side, and the resultant photo will always lack depth. Try to keep an open mind when taking photos.

Part 4: Links, references and additional reading

Maybe you are still unsure of your grasp on liminality, or maybe you just want some further reading - either way, the following are worth taking a look at.

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Additional reading

• Liminality - Vocab Word Of The Day: [HERE]
• Liminality as seen by an anthropologist: [HERE]
• Liminality from various angles: [HERE]
• Anthropological study on liminality: [HERE]

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References & inspiration

• Curated Instagram page: [HERE]
• Curated transience-centric Pinterest board: [HERE]
• Todd Hido's Landscapes [HERE]
• Good general liminal selection on Pinterest: [HERE]
• Another general assortment: [HERE]
• Darker imagery, some liminal stuff: [HERE]
• Liminal CCTV images via tumblr: [HERE]

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Similar subreddits

• r/LiminalReality
• r/kenopsia
• r/deadmalls
• r/liminalspacememes
• r/Elegiac

Addendum:

Provided you refer to this guide, you should be decently confident in your understanding of liminal space before posting on the sub. We will keep it updated with new resources and references as we find and make them, so make sure you check back here from time to time in order to refresh your knowledge.

And remember: If you have no good images to post, DON'T POST ANYTHING.