Photographs by Lynn Saville
Introduction by Arthur C. Danto

Lynn Saville photographs New York during the time of transition from daylight to night, the fleeting moments when natural light gives way to streetlight, moonlight, window light, and advertisement and surveillance lighting. Subdued tones and shadows reveal a geometry hidden beneath the visual distractions of daylight. Saville has sought out places that seem questionable―deserted factories, back alleys, the shadowy infrastructure of urban highways and bridges that suggest the city’s exoskeleton. Unpopulated and sometimes unsettling, these images can be read on many levels; their evocative colors can seem garish or sublime. Taken together the photographs of Night/Shift create a unique portrait of the city and a personal meditation for each viewer.

“Atget recorded Paris in the early morning, before anyone was about. We feel his presence in the surrounding emptiness he has kept for the generations…Saville is his New York counterpart, the Atget of vanishing New York, prowling her city at the other end of the day, picking up pieces of the past in the present, just before it is swallowed by shadows…”

–Arthur C. Danto, from Introduction to Night/Shift