And when there's no one left...

Xizhimen Road, Beijing

Place de la Concorde, Paris

Times Square, New York City

Tian'anmen Square, Beijing

Madison Square, New York City

Place de l'Opéra

Source and images via Lucie & Simon

Silent World by Lucie & Simon

"The silence of the world, like a quotation, is suddenly endowed with an oppressive eloquence. small intrusions are the true sparks here, because their disconcerting presence disrupts the majestic calm of the streets and squares. Are the latter guitly or victims? The fate that governs these shots in a tangible way is not the result of decisions taken by metaphysical powers, but stems uniquely from the imagination of the two creators of these photos, Lucid & Simon.

Although they consciously and intelligently stage the principle of the "deja-vu", the nevertheless brilliantly include observers in their game and transform them into co-creators of their images. They undermine the idea that the photographic image is a duplicate of the visible world or a "language without code" (Roland Barhtes), an image that is at least <> at the moment of its creation. They endow their photographs with an abundance of unsettling codes, of the most diverse persuasions and origins, particularly those arising from other images. However, these codes don't focus the images. They serve instead to incite observers to fill them with language of their own experience and their own imagination."

A world without people might very well be a language without code.