As a photographer, I work by night, more specifically, during the transition from daylight to night. In this liminal period, natural light gives way to streetlight, moonlight, window light, as well as advertisement and surveillance lighting. Several years ago, I began to use color film to capture how colors flare up near streetlights and how the intense blue of the sky complements the ambers, yellows, and greens of artificial lights.
I have been a roamer of limbo regions, one of our last frontiers—places that seem unloved and overlooked, cracks in the urban facade. When I discover a site that attracts me, I return to it at dusk. The first few times, the atmospheric conditions or the artificial lighting may not be quite right. But on a subsequent visit, I may find that a streetlight has gone out, creating the odd shadow that renders the space more angular. I’m delighted by such discrepancies, which are nearly invisible during the daytime: the unexpected and asymmetric, the quietly out of kilter.
Recently, I have undertaken a project entitled “Vacancy,” in which I explore at twilight the patches of emptiness that honeycomb New York and other cities. I’ve noticed that in response to the Great Recession, the sense of absence characteristic of fringe and marginal areas has begun to haunt more fashionable streets as well. On New York City’s Madison Avenue, even in the central area between 70th and 90th streets, many stores have gone out of business. Their empty or nearly empty display windows can take on a strangely formal beauty. Shuttered stores can also isolate and enhance the uncanny aura of neighboring, still viable establishments.
I have also begun to appreciate the ghostly presence of fleeting figures in my pictures. Are they surrogates for me, actors hurrying across a set, or lost friends and relatives coming to people my nocturnal cityscapes? Whoever they are, these figures add to the feeling that something has just happened, that something is about to happen.
Lynn Saville
