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Richard Misrach, "Stonehenge #4," 1976
Richard Misrach has photographed at night throughout his career, beginning with a documentary project of homeless people in Berkeley, California in 1974. This image was originally printed on long-obsolete Agfa paper that produced a wide range of colors using a split toning technique. Shortly after creating this series of work, Misrach switched to the 8 x 10 view camera and color negative film. He was one of the first artists to produce large-scale photographic color prints.
- Steve Harper, "Self, Sutro Baths Ruins," 1979
Steve Harper says that this image "represents the universality of all things—i, the blanket, the fog and the sea are all the same substance."33 Harper developed and taught the first college-level class on night photography at the Academy of Art College in San Francisco in 1979. He inspired a generation of night photographers (including the author) and was an important part of the vibrant night photography scene in the Bay Area from the 1970s through the 1990s.
Harper began his photographic career in front of the camera as a model for the Ford Agency in New York in the 1960s. After moving to California, he began teaching at the Academy of Art College in 1979, where he developed and taught the first college-level class on the subject of night photography. He taught this course for 12 years and mentored a new generation of night photographers, ensuring the continuation of the rich tradition of night photography in the Bay Area. Camaraderie and community were always important to Harper, and his students continued to photograph and exhibit together long after the classes were over.32 Among Harper's more notable students were Tim Baskerville, founder of The Nocturnes, an organization that promotes night photography in the Bay Area, and Tom Paiva, a commercial and industrial night photographer based in Los Angeles. Harper's own images often included figures, sometimes his students, but often himself. Of the image reproduced here, Harper says, "I identify this image with the universality of all things—the way the ocean, the sky and I appear to have morphed into the same molecular elements."33
Although the bulk of night photography activity shifted from the East Coast to the West Coast after World War II, there were still photographers on the East Coast working at night, like George Tice, who made many night photographs of his native New Jersey throughout the 1970s. Undoubtedly, his best-known image is "Petit's Mobile Station, Cherry Hill, NJ," 1974. Tice says that the water tower looming above the gas station reminded him of Lincoln Cathedral rising above the town in F. H. Evans's 1898 photograph "Lincoln Cathedral: From the Castle." This 2-minute exposure on 8 x 10 inch Tri-X film actually required about 10 minutes to make because Tice had to cover the lens whenever cars passed in front of the camera. This technique of repeatedly covering the lens to block the lights of passing cars requires diligence
- George Tice, "Petit's Mobil Station," Cherry Hill, NJ, 1974
George Tice's iconic image of a water tower looming over a gas station in New Jersey is probably his best-known work. Throughout the 1970s, Tice photographed twilight and night scenes of his native New Jersey on 8 x 10 black and white film. Original gelatin silver prints of this image have unbelievably rich shadow detail and luminous highlights.
and patience, but it has been successfully employed by photographers dating as far back as Paul Martin in 1896.34
In 1979, photographer Jan Staller published a book of color night and twilight photographs taken in the industrial wastelands around New York City. The photographs are notable for the surreal nature of the subject matter and the unusual colors created in the darkroom when Staller color corrected for the various industrial light sources in the scenes he photographed. Staller's prints could only be balanced for a single light source, but the scenes he photographed were often lit by multiple sources. Many of his images have intense red or purple skies.
Unquestionably, the most prolific night photographer of the second half of the 20th century is Michael Kenna. In the mid-1980s, Kenna retraced the footsteps of his countryman Bill Brandt, who had documented the industrial cities and mill towns of northern England in the 1930s. Although most of Brandt's work from this series was shot during daylight hours, his prints are dark and contrasty, such that many of the images almost look as if they were taken at night. This in turn influenced Kenna's decision to photograph some of the same sites at night nearly 50 years later. Kenna's work gained a wider audience after the publication of his photographs of Ratcliffe Power Station in Nottinghamshire, also in the industrial north of England. A great traveler, Kenna would go on to photograph extensively in France, Japan, and many other locations, often at the intersection of the man-made and natural worlds. Kenna says, "The underlying subject matter is the relationship, confrontation, and/or juxtaposition, between the landscape ... and the human fingerprint, the traces that we leave, the structures, buildings and stories."35 Kenna tries to create work that is timeless noting that "the images could be created in the day or at night, today or a year ago."36 Kenna continues to be one of the most prolific and successful landscape photographers working today.
To date, there have been at least four significant group exhibits of night photography in the i
United States. The largest and most ambitious was curated by Keith F. Davis from the Hallmark f
Photographic Collection. Night Light, A Survey of Twentieth Century Night Photography opened °
i at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in January 1989 and was subsequently shown at 10 art hh museums across the country, closing at the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego in 1991. 3
The printed catalog of Davis's exhibit was the starting point for the research in this chapter.
In 1991, photographer Tim Baskerville curated a group exhibit of night photographs at Gallery
Sanchez in San Francisco entitled The Nocturnes, which eventually became the basis of the 7
organization of the same name. In 2003, the Williams College Museum of Art presented an exhibit of contemporary night photographs called Wait Until Dark from a private collection. In
2007, the Three Columns Gallery at Harvard University premiered an exhibit titled Darkness
Darkness, curated by the author of this book, that showcased the work of 34 contemporary night photographers and was subsequently presented in several different venues.
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