My series, Darkening, reveals nighttime worlds otherwise undetected and builds upon photography’s historic relationship with making the unseen visible. Influenced by allegorical painting, spirit photography, and notions of the uncanny, I adapt scientific and stealth imaging techniques towards poetic ends.
These photographs were shot using camera traps, automated devices that detect heat or movement and then trigger the camera’s shutter. While this equipment was originally developed to snare pictures of rare or nocturnal animals, I repurpose it to create enigmatic photographs in which boundaries shift, blurring the lines between human and animal, fact and fiction. Many images reveal some uncanny tableau: glowing animal eyes piercing the blackness, a glimpse of a feral woman haunting the forest, or an unexplained spectral light. Like images from a vivid dream, my photographs document a poignant convergence of nature and the psyche.
Megan Cump
Megan Cump lives in Brooklyn, she has a degree at School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago IL
