Storefronts at night are often illuminated, conveying a sense of presence while advertising the products and services inside.
However, the interior displays of these storefronts contain unavailable wares and solicit absent viewers. The display of wares is what in fact signals the unavailability of those wares, and the act of solicitation only calls attention to the absence of a viewer.
The illuminated interiors serve to enhance security by simulating presence, but this simulation is obvious and transparent, as it is the illumination itself that reveals the unpopulated interiors as visibly deserted.
Photographs of these storefronts allow a previously absent viewer to view a representation of these spaces. The physical presence of each storefront has been removed and replaced with a simulation. The visual details that depict each storefront simultaneously signify the lack of its physical presence. The viewer is removed a further step from the promises of presence exhibited by the storefronts, as well as the products and services that the storefronts advertise.
What remains is artificial and stark, a transparent simulation contained within another transparent simulation, contained in an image and unavailable to the viewer, except as an idea that only functions to negate itself.