Black Basin (2013–)
Some years ago I started photographing at night during the winter months, a time when I’m stuck at work staring at a screen for all of the daylight hours. What began out of practicality and frustration in a period of profound personal transition turned to preoccupation when I discovered a familiar world made strange by darkness and artificial light. Breaking out of my routine to wander neighborhoods at night has become a ritual that I look forward to with anticipation each year in the fall. These photographs are part of an ongoing series of night landscapes made in and around Raleigh, North Carolina, the place that I call home.
—Adam Bellefeuil
Time Exposures
When the exposed spirit, busy in daytime,
searches out night, only renewer,
that time plants turn to. The world’s table.
When any single thing’s condemned again.
The changeable spirit finds itself out,
will not employ Saint Death, detective,
does its own hunting, runs at last to night.
Renewer, echo of judgment, morning-source, music.
Dark streets that light invents, one black tree standing,
struck by the street-light stand raw electric green,
allow one man at a time to walk past, plain.
Cities lose size. The earth is field,
and ranging these countries in sunset, we make quiet,
living in springtime, wish for nothing, see
glass bough, invented green, flower-sharp day
crackle into orange and be subdued to night.
The mind propelled by work, reaches its evening:
slick streets, dog-tired, point the way to sleep.
We drive out to the suburbs, bizarre lawns
flicker a moment beside the speeding cars.
Speed haunts our ground, throws counties at us under
night, a black basin always spilling stars.
—Muriel Rukeyser
Bio:
Born and raised in Michigan. Living in North Carolina with my wife and son. For more than 15 years I’ve worked as a video games designer making noisy explosions. With my camera, I’m preoccupied with making quiet discoveries about the places we live.
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