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
I 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.
I find walking through seemingly empty neighborhoods quite relaxing, if not eerie when my mind isn’t already preoccupied by something else.
Check out some of this guys photography. You might like
http://www.jwesleybrown.com/semblances/
Thanks 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