Eloquent Empty Spaces - NYTimes.com Lynn Saville Space for Rent, Midtown Manhattan, 2012 More Photos  WHEN I began photographing cities at twilight, I was attracted to outlying regions, places that seemed unloved and overlooked. More recently, I have been lured back to the central areas of cities, where economic turmoil has produced its own gaps in the urban facade. Glowing windows resemble a Rothko painting, evoking a disquieting beauty. I began my series "Vacancy" to pursue this contrast between aesthetic perception and economic distress. As the economy improved, shuttered stores were reconverted to new businesses. I came to appreciate that this process had its own iconography, whose symbols included the ladder and the broom. I also began to see how a scene first understood as vacant had its own secret plenitude: a lively visual conversation among tools, abandoned objects and reflections. Signs of previous occupation, failure and loss mingle with hints of renewal and re-creation. Working in places such as New York, Los Angeles, Portland, Me., Boston, Cleveland, Columbus, Ohio, Detroit and Houston, I continue to photograph cities at dawn or dusk. These transitional times underscore the shifting nature of vacancy and offer glimpses of cityscapes in rare moments of emptiness. Lynn Saville is an artist in New York whose most recent book of photography is "Night/Shift."