And Now It's Dark: American Night Photography

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Saturday 6 September - Sunday 9 November 2014

Djanogly Art Gallery Opening Hours
Monday - Saturday 11am - 5pm
Sundays 12noon - 4pm

For the first time in the UK, And Now it's Dark showcases the work of three leading American photographers - Jeff Brouws, Todd Hido and Will Steacy - who all make images at night.

On peripatetic road journeys through the US, Jeff Brouws captures the glow of headlamps and neon - the illuminated attractions and distractions of the American roadside that give a troubling picture of commercial encroachment on the landscape.

Photographs from Will Steacy's project, Down These Mean Streets, present the culmination of a series of 'night walks' made by the photographer from a variety of regional airports to the financial centres of nearby cities. Steacy's work confronts the economic hinterlands, abandoned places and 'peripheral' resident populations seemingly forgotten or ignored by mainstream American politics. Todd Hido's night photographs are imbued with a psychological tension and emotional drama that underpin the suburban American landscape. Hido's work is driven by narrative and memory, and his landscapes, suburban scenes and interiors possess an ever present sense that something has happened or is just about to happen.

The work of these three contemporary photographers is contextualised within the exhibition by seminal examples of earlier night photography. Jack Delano, a photographer who was part of the FSA/OWI documentary projects of the 1930s and 1940s along with Walker Evans, Russell Lee and Dorothea Lange, produced a number of kodachrome night photographs. His images of railway yards, especially, present a picture of growing national prosperity and the early commercialisation of the mid-century landscape. William Klein's short film Broadway by Light (1958), underscores the neon invasion of the American cityscape, lighting the night in a mesmerising flood of colour and movement. Blackout, New York (1965), a series of photographs by Rene Burri in November 1965 offers an alternative view of the city as it was thrown into pitch darkness with scenes lit only by the torches of police officers, candles and the interior lights of buses and cars.

Curated for the Djanogly Art Gallery by Dr. Mark Rawlinson, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Nottingham.