Defying Darkness: Photography at Night

Night only suggests things, it doesn’t fully reveal them. Night unnerves us and surprises us with its strangeness; it frees […]

Night only suggests things, it doesn’t fully reveal them. Night unnerves us and surprises us with its strangeness; it frees powers within us which were controlled by reason during the day…
– Brassaï

Defying Darkness: Photography at Night, drawn exclusively from the museum’s permanent collection, surveys the ways in which photographers have used the camera to explore the visual and symbolic potential of the nocturnal image. Night photography began as an artistic genre more than a century ago and in the ensuing years many of the modern era’s leading photographers have been drawn to the challenge of making images after dark.

Defying Darkness features photographs by Berenice Abbott, Brassaï, Larry Clark, Bill Henson, André Kertész, Chris McCaw, Richard Misrach, Alexander Rodchenko, Sebastiao Salgado, Edward Steichen, Weegee and many others.

Image Credit:
Bill Henson, Untitled #20 (LMO SH177 N2A), 2000/2001, C-Print, Peter and Olivia Farrell Australian Photography Collection, Image courtesy of Bill Henson and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne.