The Monochrome Chronicles #24: After Dark (Part I)
If you lay quietly in bed listening to the Bakelite radio sitting in the east window of the second floor bedroom in your turn-of-the-century farmhouse, you can hear music from outside your world. At night the little radio would pick up the signal from a station in Chicago, 400 miles across the plains. The station played a new style of music that was called “rock-and-roll.” Occasionally, rarely but still sometimes, the radio picked up a station in New Orleans, a city far beyond the stretch of your imagination, and sounds of jazz emanated from the tiny speaker. And remember, these experiences occurred only late at night.
These memories remained deeply buried for more than 60 years until I began writing this issue of The Monochrome Chronicles. I’m tempted to say that experiences such as these were the origins of my life as a night person – but I won’t. That’s what I am, though.
My experimentation with night photography began while I was taking night courses at ICP in New York. No surprise, then, that soon I was combining night photography and street photography, for the latter genre flourished in NYC at that time.
Well, enough about me except to say I continued with street photography at night throughout the ensuing 25+ years. In retrospect, now, I recognize that my point of view evolved over the years, moving more toward expressive night photography and away from street photography.
This work divides easily into two parts. This episode of The Monochrome Chronicles covers the more expressive images in which people are mostly absent. The next episode will cover the more people-centric images.
By the way, I’ve arranged this series thematically, ignoring time and location as being unimportant.
What a luxury, to be alone in the middle of a city of 8 million people. Yes, city life often means crowds and crowds of people, often moving at a hectic pace. Still people as individuals sometimes need solitude. The plaza at Lincoln Center would be an unlikely place for solitude both for this newspaper reader and for me as a photographer. The perspective is unusual for me, too, with a wider angle and smaller subject. Unexpected, yes, but also a rare opportunity.
A single lighted window set in a plain gray wall symbolizes security, at least for me. The simplicity of this geometric composition is misleading, I think. The window is well lit but also confers privacy. The simplicity is soothing but it hides a deeper feeling. On the other hand, the bars on the window hint that this could be a prison. Interpersonal relationships are like that sometimes. In terms of technical values for a black-and-white print, the image ranks quite high, I believe, but the key element is the emotional content, repressed but strong.
Ambivalence pervades this lonely street. Something was waiting to happen here, something foreboding, threatening, as evidenced by the lone motorcycle standing by the curb. In a sense the scene is a reminder of an era that disappeared long ago. Not nostalgia, but something regrettably faded from memory, flickers of a motorcycle accident I witnessed on the street in front of my elementary school. Just remembering it sets my insides quivering. Carefully repressed memories.
Street theater can erupt anywhere to reward a patient observer. Clearly, this guy was rushing into an open stairwell, but the where and why are missing from the image. He might be…well, I remember the story but that’s immaterial to the image. His actions and body language are caught on film. I’ve discharged my role as photographer, now it’s the viewer’s turn.
A passenger train with no passengers, its doors open, waiting at a station platform, somehow seems ominous. The perspective in this image, from above the train, contributes to this mood. The feeling is as if time had stopped. The absence of people is particularly disturbing.
At the end of the day, before the lights go out, a barren train platform becomes a symbol of abandonment. Hundreds, or possibly thousands, of feet have trodden along this platform during the day but none of them left an impression. The stairway at the end of the platform is now silent. The station has seen thousands of nights like this and will be ready again tomorrow morning.
Contrary to expectations, telephone booths at night – symbols of a bygone era before the ubiquitous mobile phone – become haunting on this vacant street. At one time they would have been symbols of communication, maybe a late-night call to a friend or an emergency call of distress. Nowadays, phone booths are an endangered species. The core of this image, then harkens back to an earlier time.
Recalling a pinball machine from the 1950s, this man appears to be in suspended motion. The perspective of the image is unusual, contributing to the feeling of unreality. So many elements of the composition are unrecognizable or nearly so, but this tends to focus attention on the man and his cell phone.
These streets are vacant, save for a single blurry figure crossing the intersection. The streets are devoid of traffic. Here, too, the perspective is unusual, the seemingly omnipotent viewer standing directly above the vacant street. Omnipotence would be moot, though, in a vacant world. Instead of solitude, the atmosphere here is nihilistic.
The bicycle would seem to draw the viewer into this alley, even though the alley was vacant. Formerly the alley was lined with outdated old-style shops, and this location was undergoing redevelopment. At one end the alley opened onto a trendy street with neon and contemporary architecture. At the other end it opened onto a quiet, dark back street. A neighborhood in transition. Ironically, the style of the refurbished alley would be faux retro.
Nighttime transforms this busy street into an alien setting where almost anything could happen but where, ironically, nothing seems to be happening. This image transcends solitude into another plane. It goes beyond the absence of people into a realm where people no longer exist.
A walk along a country road just after dusk, with a village ahead and telephone wires receding into the distance reveals another kind of solitude, so different from the solitude of city streets. Here the sky is vast, limited only by the horizon. The only sound was the crunch of gravel under my shoes.
The impermanence of a man is dwarfed by the seeming permanence of a church. Initially, the ghostly church was the subject but the coincidental appearance of the man walking past changed the image ineradicably.
Elimination of the foreground dramatically alters the point of view. Symbolically, this neighborhood seems to have lost its identity, as if no one lived there anymore. On the other hand, the broad gray space is soothing. The element of time is absent from this image.
Metaphorically, an approach-and-avoidance conflict dominates this basically geometric image. The mood could be encouraging, a welcome return at the end of the day. Or it could be threatening, with danger lurking in the shadows. The composition is unconventional, which emphasizes the approach-and-avoidance aura.
Finding solitude at the end of a busy day is its own reward. Poetry such as this is discovered, not created. Serendipity plays a large role. A street photographer relies on instinct, sometimes recognizing the moment as it develops. Sometimes the image emerges in the darkroom.
Either a man descending a stairway (with apologies to Picasso) or a man on a downward spiral, the interpretation comes from the viewer’s perspective. This man will remain anonymous, and the image ambiguous, as it should be.
There was a man who, or so it seemed, had slipped between the planes of time, whose face seemed to be haunted by invisible memories. At night, and on the street, my technique often becomes erratic. I’m drawn along by my subjects. Sometimes the subject and my technique coalesce, such as with this image where the subject predominates. Stripped of all other elements of photography, the forlorn look on this man’s face predominates.
He looks like a corpse in a casket. So many friends and exes have died and I never saw a single one in his casket. That’s not part of our ritual and besides, I ran away. I wonder what I was afraid of? Not afraid of death. Afraid of the intimacy of loss. A black widow spider. More dead men than live ones in my address book. Ghosts of the recently departed.
A man’s story told without words. He is who he is. The scene repeats itself time and again but each story is individual. Try to imagine the world as seen through this man’s eyes, not with pity, and not with censure, but from his point of view. As viewers, we cannot know, but we might be able to imagine.
Homeless people sleeping on the sidewalk was a common sight. Pedestrians would merely walk on by, inviting comparison to the Biblical parable of the Good Samaritan. Do not be mislead by thinking that the subject of this image is homelessness per se. The message here is that homeless people are an element of street life, possibly more visible in this image than otherwise. Part of the mosaic of city life.
Although the scene is nearly devoid of context, the tension in this striking image is palpable, though its source is unknown. The man himself seems out of place on a city sidewalk, but then again the background hardly seems to be urban, either. The man’s posture makes him seem hostile, which is reinforced by his poorly visible facial expression. The overall impression is one of uncertainty.
Nighttime masks an unspeakable sadness. Herein, I need to step out from behind the editorial third person. This is a powerful street portrait and yet I was reluctant to show it in this episode. The expression on this young woman’s face is unsettling. Perhaps I respond so strongly to this image due to the context, which I remember clearly but which I refuse to divulge. Or possibly it is not the context per se but what I read into the context. I don’t know the full story.
Distortion of reality becomes magnified at night. Pedestrians seemingly are dwarfed by the scale of this train station, though this is an optical illusion. Therein lies my point of view – though more my perspective as a person rather than as a photographer. Such is the power of photography. Viewers may accept or reject my point of view. Nonetheless this is my own opinion.
Glass-wall buildings become mirrors at night. Herein, several layers of the city are hauntingly visible, with varying levels of clarity. Several elements compete for attention in the composition. The lamp post in the foreground is in focus. The silhouette of the buildings in the background set the scene. The most ambiguous and yet the strongest element is the reflection of the older, more elaborate building on the glass wall. A walk along the sidewalk of a city at night devolves into an eclectic mosaic.
After a rainstorm, this normally mundane scene has been transformed into a dramatic, and possibly foreboding, setting. In one sense this image works as a geometrical abstract. In another sense it conveys extreme loneliness. Though drawn from a narrow sliver of the city’s landscape, the lack of detail in this image invites the viewer’s subconscious to intuit the point of view. Invisible elements in the shadows contribute to the mystery.
City streets subsume an alternate character at night. These images reveal more about me and my night vision, than about life on the streets. Metaphorically, they paint a portrait of my photographer’s state of mind, of the solitude that can be found on the streets at night. Nearly all of them are devoid of people, uncharacteristically for my photography. The next episode of The Monochrome Chronicles will rectify that omission.
