One of the things I like in imagery — photographic or graphic — is when an artist or a curator is able to capture the quietude hidden within moments of great activity. This is why I like photographer Carli Davidson’s shots of pets shaking their heads so much, and why I can’t stop talking about John Hilgart’s 4CP project. These bodies of work unearth the fleeting elegance buried in unexpected places and demonstrate that the more closely we look at things, the more likely we’ll see beauty.

This is also why I’m crazy for Space Trek an image blog that finds great, unexpected moments of quietude in the original “Star Trek” television show from the late 1960s. Here’s one example:

Space Trek’s purpose is to show us “The quiet despair of the Starship Enterprise,” and it does this by highlighting the transitional moments from the television show that we normally don’t pay much attention to. Each screen capture is like a little portrait of the show’s flimsily makeshift architecture and sickly technicolor lighting. They remind me how eerie the show felt to me when I saw it for the first time, in endless reruns, as a kid. The show was not just fantastic, it was strange and somewhat off, almost unseemly in its otherworldliness. That’s something that seems to have been lost in nearly every reboot of the franchise since. Anyway, Space Trek is worth a look; see it here.

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