Robert Raczka

dark & shiny night, digital photography/inkjet prints, 2007-2010

These photographs represent the surreal beauty of the world at night, including the human-made and the conjunction of the human-made and the natural. These are photographs of places that I know intimately--they are not an outsider's view. They are realistic to the extent that photography can be realistic--no flash was used and nothing was altered by Photoshop or other means. While they may look spontaneous, they are all carefully considered, and such elements as glaring lights or a tilted angle are used to convey the feeling I had walking around at night and experiencing these scenes.

My primary experience is that of walking in the darkness and coming upon something bright and colorful and dramatic, usually as an aspect of commerce as it appeals to human desires, such as the glamour of fashion in a stage-like window display, but also sometimes the mere happenstance of, for example, the dramatic presence of streetlights illuminating a tree. These photographs reflect my attention to the unnoticed, adding up to a form of visual travelogue. I generally find the appearance of the world to be inexorably strange, and in these photographs I especially seek to convey the surreal and uncanny experience that I feel walking at night.