Michael Light

Michael Light

L.A. DAY / L.A. NIGHT

Santa Monica, California

April 30 – June 24, 2022

Danziger Gallery Los Angeles is pleased to announce our ongoing representation of photographer Michael Light with the show L.A. DAY / L.A. NIGHT opening April 30th.

Michael Light (b.1963) is considered one of the pre-eminent aerial photographers of his generation, and for the last 20 years has focused largely on humankind’s encroachment of the natural world and its subsequent impact.

Photographed in 2004 and 2005, each image within L.A. DAY/ L.A. NIGHT offers its own individual view of the city of Los Angeles from a perspective of several hundred to several thousand feet above its tallest buildings.

Conceived as complementary parts of a whole, L.A. DAY showcases the sprawling metropolis with beauty and concern, capturing its staggering scale while foreshadowing its continual growth into the foreseeable future. Concrete highways curl and twist over one another, sophisticated architectural marvels of engineering glisten in the golden light while man-made rivers cut through hillsides, transporting water through the once-arid desert. Familiar local sites may be active and busy but viewed from a distance Light’s images lend a calming sense of space to an area teeming with 4 million inhabitants living in close proximity.

In contrast, L.A. NIGHT with its pinpoints of light, creates a moody meditation reminiscent of star maps. Whether the city is at rest or not, it is hard not to imagine each individual light as a single person, as though the soul of the city is a nocturnal being comprised of its vulnerable sleeping citizens. Los Angeles at night seems to be in suspended animation waiting for the next sunrise.

Seen together as they were intended, L.A. DAY and L.A. NIGHT create a balance of opposites that complement each other and reveal the topography of Los Angeles as though Light was photographing the surface of the moon from inside a space capsule. (This should come as no surprise given Light’s photographic expertise and his seminal publication of NASA’s Apollo photography in the book “Full Moon”.)

Michael Light is a San Francisco-based photographer interested in environmental issues through both geological and sociological contexts. Throughout his career, Light has focused on important subjects with an aesthetic call to action for future generations.

Light is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship for photography, and his work is in the collections of major museums including The GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE, SFMOMA, LACMA and the VICTORIA & ALBERT Museum.

The book L.A. DAY / L.A. NIGHT is available through Radius Books.