Into The Night

In the 90s I started making images of empty city streets at night for a project on my photography degree in Sunderland. The need to create images at night became a partial necessity as my semi-nocturnal student lifestyle made it hard during the winter months to be up and about during the daylight. There was also a desire to capture the beauty and quiet of a city in the middle of the night, to make images that reflected the silence and peace I experienced when walking home from friends’ houses at 3 in the morning. 

I started to create images of empty streets, avoiding the cliched car light trails. I wanted to capture the feeling of being alone in spaces that would normally be full of people. It was both the aesthetic as well as the sense of loneliness that I wanted to put into my images.

About 10 years ago, now in Bristol (with a family, job, regular sleeping pattern and feeling less alone in the world), I started up the project again. Swapping medium format film for full-frame digital, I have kept for the most part with making black & white images. I will use colour when it feels right, but my photographic eye and brain predominantly see the world in a monochromatic aesthetic. These images are about the interplay of light and darkness, so black & white allows me to focus on these two elements.

Most of the images below are taken in Bristol, with a few images from my degree to show where it all came from as well as a commission of Nottingham’s Trent Bridge and a bridge in Bratislava. Bridges at night photograph well.