Stacy Swiderski: Suburban Nights
Posted by Collective
New Jersey photographer Stacy Swiderski’s series Suburban Nights depicts aluminum-sided houses, above-ground pools, yards, and family cars shrouded in the purple light of dusk and the clear black of midnight. Illumination comes from sodium-yellow streetlamps, or fresh snowfall’s iridescent blue. The most noticeable thing about these photographs—apart from their silky, hyper-real color scheme—is their lack of people. Swiderski’s lonely landscapes carry a familiar melancholy for anyone who grew up in these sorts of places (myself included), and I can’t get enough of the eerie calm and—maybe I’m projecting here—subtle menace of her images.
Posted by: Todd Goldstein
4 Comments Leave A Comment
Alex says:
December 19, 2012 at 2:24 pmI agree with everything, except I do think you’re projecting. I actually find them very gentle. Their composition is dramatic enough that you feel drawn into them. Had they been composed in a more sterile, documentary fashion, I would tend more to agree with your point.
Paul Anthony Webb says:
December 19, 2012 at 10:37 pmI find walking through seemingly empty neighborhoods quite relaxing, if not eerie when my mind isn’t already preoccupied by something else.
Lace says:
December 24, 2012 at 2:42 amCheck out some of this guys photography. You might like
http://www.jwesleybrown.com/semblances/
Collective says:
December 26, 2012 at 9:51 amThanks Lace, these Semblances photos are amazing. I do love a good private moment! And Alex, I may be projecting my own proclivities for menace onto Swiderski’s work, but maybe it’s more the intense loneliness that I’m responding to — as lovely as the photos are, there’s a melancholy to her work that seems fairly undeniable. The lack of people causes me to wonder where, exactly, they all went… -Todd