Departure Lounge serves as the poignant conclusion to Jason Eskenazi’s acclaimed Black Garden Trilogy (comprising Wonderland, Black Garden, and Departure Lounge). Culled from an extensive archive dating from 1991 to 2018, the book uses the metaphor of an airport departure lounge to explore the varied states of transition—physical, emotional, and existential. Dedicated to the author’s father, the work investigates how we depart from reality, from friends, and ultimately from our younger selves. Eskenazi’s signature high-contrast, tritone black-and-white photography captures a world in flux, moving from the collapse of the Soviet Union to the modern-day turmoil of the Middle East. The book is structured with the final three chapters of the trilogy, completing a sequential numbering of 314 plates that reference the mathematical constant Pi, suggesting a journey that is both finite and infinitely circular.
