BEAUTY: Photography--Julien Mauve

Parisian photographer Julien Mauve's series "After Lights Out" imagines an eerie world of perpetual darkness. I have often had the daydream of "what if we lived on a planet that was always night, what would that look like?" but the answer I am sure would be that we would have adapted to the dark and would not need light at all. Mauve's dark world sees a lone light source as a beacon of comfort and hope...something longed for but elusive. The images are haunting... especially the one with a light burning inside a crypt (sixth image down).

http://www.julienmauve.com/

BEAUTY: Photography--Benoit Paillé

French Canadian photographer Benoit Paillé's series entitled "Alternative Landscapes" explores light in the darkness of night. The juxtaposition between these undisturbed natural settings and the apparition of the foreign, lighted white cube is enigmatic, startling, and evocative. I am reminded of The Monolith in "2001: A Space Odyssey" or the science fiction idea of worm holes or portals to other places or dimensions...

http://www.benoitp.com/

Lights Will Guide You Home

BEAUTY: Art--Amy Friend

Canadian artist Amy Friend's work is greatly informed by her Italian immigrant heritage and a sense of the past, of history, and of a connection to ancestors. In this series, which she has titled "Dare alla luce" (in Italian, this literally means "to give to the light" but is also an idiomatic expression that means "to give birth"), she has taken vintage and antique images, and after poking small holes on or around the figures in the photos, background light is allowed to glow through. In this way, she has created a ghostly image and a commentary on giving the image of light back to the light, to give birth to light, and by extension, where we go when we are done here...

Top to bottom: Borrowed Light; Jesse; Latent Light; My Sister; Villagen, Germany

http://amyfriend.ca/home.html

BEAUTY: Installation--Ryoji Ikeda

Japanese artist Ryoji Ikeda works primarily with light. Part of his Spectra series employs an array of extremely powerful Xenon searchlights aimed straight up into the sky. This installation has been adapted for many different cities around the globe...

The result is visually compelling, and evokes a beam going out into space, a beacon, a transmittal. Searchlights are traditionally used to draw attention to special events and these pieces evoke that as well. And of course, those of us living in the United States have seen the two searchlights aimed straight up where the World Trade Center buildings used to be, the light occupying the loss, serving as an ethereal memorial.

Above: Spectra (Nagoya)

Above: Spectra (Paris)

Above: Spectra (Buenos Aires)

Above: Spectra (Barcelona)

http://www.ryojiikeda.com/

BEAUTY: Art--Robert Montgomery

Word of advice to those who live in them:

More word art from the marvelous Robert Montgomery (previously posted here).

http://www.robertmontgomery.org/robertmontgomery.org/ROBERT_MONTGOMERY.html