WHAT'S NOT THERE
Taken as a whole, the installation was a monument to absence: There were photographs of missing graffiti, vanished restaurants and empty lots where buildings used to be. ''Lydia was my junior high prom date to this hotel'' reads the caption beneath the skeleton of a budding building.
The photographs were printed on cardstock and aged to look like vintage postcards. One of the installation's strengths came from the play of image and context: At first glance, it was easy to believe the Office Depot had stood on that corner for decades.
It's just the sort of sly glance at history (and its poor country cousin, nostalgia) that ran through the entire project. It was impossible not to note that the 180 photographs covered an entire wall of a downtown warehouse that is itself destined to make way for the new.
But ''Absence of Place'' engaged without preaching, a refreshing reminder that there is life beyond blunt opinion, and that it is art that takes us there.
Listen to a few readers' memories read aloud.