Rhapsody in Black

A tribute to James Abbot McNeil Whistler

On this page you will find a series of photographic works exploring the rich tonality of nighttime colour photography. These images capture the depth of feeling evoked by the nocturnal world, and touch on the deep fears at the root of our being. They explore the meaning of darkness to the modern person, supposedly separated from primal concerns by our world of light and warmth. On this page you will find a path to the truth.

1. Harmony in Black and Black

This work takes a simple photograph of the River Ouse at midnight and, by inverting the subject, removes some of the normal homely associations of the scene and forces us to address it anew. The result is a disturbing reappraisal of our relationship with the city scene, an effect heightened by the limited palette of the photograph.

2. After The Fireworks

This image evokes a sense of deep sadness and regret. A rather carefully constructed photograph (too careful?) of a family garden after their Guy Fawkes' Night celebrations are over. It makes us look again at our assumptions about the values of the family and the violence perpetrated by patriarchal structures in modern society. Does the title, perhaps, betoken family conflict and its awful aftermath?

3. The Road to Ruin

A particularly thoughtful piece; this photograph looks into the life of a homeless person, sleeping rough on the streets of London and shows things from his point of view. It reveals the bleakness of their situation in a visually arresting way, and the title brings to mind the seemingly inescapable darkness of their predicament.

4. Midnight Minuet

In a surprising departure for the artist, this work takes us into the natural world and examines the way in which animals deal with the night. The scene pictured captures the highly charged life of the mole in one frozen moment. Its essential inhumanity seems to be one with the nature of Night. A truly revolutionary work.

Conclusion

All of these works push back the envelope of what we mean by "art". The artist freely aknowledges his debt to Rothko in his use of colour, but we can see that it is the earlier, and much more mannered, work of Whistler that is his true inspiration: we recall that Whistler would sign his works with the monogram of the butterfly, and if we look carefully at these works, we might just detect the artist's own monogram - the black raven - almost insignificant in the bottom left corner of each of them.

This page last updated Mon 08/03/99