Night Lights: Our Perpetual Daylight
By Jaclyn Paul
27 Sep 2008
The modern age is afraid of the dark: while we sleep, our industrial complexes, academic buildings, shopping malls, even our churches remain illuminated. Our homes and landscaping, too, are often under spotlights when the sun goes down. What are we to make of this quest for perpetual daylight? What are we trying to stop? To hide? To show?
Bright lighting often implies security, but this combination of desertion and illumination is more disquieting than comforting. Stripped of human presence late at night, places take on a moodiness, an expectancy, a surreal tension. The most everyday elements of our landscape become unfamiliar and uncomfortable.
On the nights when I collected these images, they forced a penetrating feeling of isolation upon me. I found these bright and deserted spaces disquieting and discomforting. I was navigating an uncomfortable emotional space. The resulting images are my commentary on perpetual daylight, the surreal and artificial nature of these places. They are the isolation that results.
