Extinction Nocturne

“This collection of photographs was made over the span of twenty years. Some are fragments from family vacations; others began as quiet experiments that evolved into a fuller series. The recent night work from Japan and France returns to a work method I first explored in architecture school in the late ‘90s— made after class late at night. Many of the early black-and-white images I showed with the gallery emerged from the same impulse, made in and around Vancouver’s periphery. 

I’ve always been drawn to photographing at night, particularly in cities. Shadows move in unexpected ways. Colours reveal themselves as strange and luminous. And even the most restless places find a kind of stillness. Tokyo offered this most vividly—when the trains stop, whole districts slow and become silent. You can walk through the world’s largest city and feel alone with it.

The France series came from a two-week camper van journey tracing the country’s borders—from the north near Belgium down to Spain. These images explore similar territory but are shaped by a recent government initiative called “extinction noctourne”, a policy that darkens streets at night to preserve energy. An app called J’allume ma rue (“I light my street”) lets residents summon the lights back. The towns using it slip into near-total darkness after a certain hour, interrupted only by small areas of light as someone passes through—usually just long enough to capture a few frames.

Like most travel photography, the journey matters more than the destination. I see these images as vignettes of slowness in the margins of our hurried world—reminders that another kind of time persists. A time where looking can linger. To sit, wait, and finally witness something is to remember what it means to pay attention”