Photographing nothing

Duane Michals said:

"How foolish of me to believe that it would be that easy. I had confused the appearances of trees and automobiles and people with reality itself, and believed that a photograph of these appearances to be a photograph of it. It is a melancholy truth that I will never be able to photograph it and can only fail. I am a reflection photographing other reflections within a reflection. To photograph reality is to photograph nothing."

This quotation, whilst intriguing, does not help me much in my quest to understand the nature of 'nothingness'. It can be inferred from Michals' words that it is not possible to take a photograph of nothing, as it is not possible to photograph reality, only a facsimile of it. There is always something in a photograph, even if it is nothing but pure black or white space, it is still a photograph of whatever that black or white space is. The camera lens has to be pointed at something, even if it is the inside of a lenscap.

Further thinking has led me to decide that it is possible to take a photograph of nothing: nothing which is apparent, anyway. When we walk into a darkened room, or venture out on a night-walk in the countryside, we can see nothing, at least to start with. After a while, when our eyes become accustomed to the darkness, we begin to perceive vague shapes, outlines and sources of light. I recall staying in a hotel recently where the bathroom had no natural light, being an internal room. When I shut the door, the room was completely, utterly black - I could see nothing. Within a very short time (having decided to experiment and not turn on the light) I saw a faint strip of light where the door closed up to the frame. Then came the outline of the white walls - I could soon determine the shape of the room and the position of the furniture. So... had I taken a picture of the 'nothing' which I was able to see, I would have shown, depending on the length of the exposure, that nothing actually comprised quite a lot.