Alleys & Ruins no. 1, Electric Sky (1991, Montreal, QC, 10pm)

Alleys & Ruins no. 1 was shot in September of 1991 - the first image in the series was shot before I knew I was developing a cohesive body of urban decay shot at night.

Electric Sky is not the first run-down urban decay I shot at night, but I think it’s the first where I somehow managed to elevate a downtrodden, even banal urban scene into something almost uplifting - the complete opposite of what seemed the reality of the actual scene.

I didn’t know why I was doing this at the time, and I certainly didn’t have a series planned. It wasn’t until the summer of 1993 that I had the required epiphany. Once I came to recognize the vision that I had been dancing around, the series took off. That summer was the true beginning of the series.

I was drawn to areas where people don’t go, inside a busy, loud city – they were small, grungy oases, where it was quiet and where I felt comfortable. And there I would be, surrounded by incredibly stimulating newness – stuff you wouldn’t see anywhere else but in places society shunned. Since they were barely, if at all maintained, the scars left by the elements (including the weather and people) only accumulated, making them more and more interesting the older they were.

I needed a lot of time to myself, and I needed to take pictures. The perfect solution was to walk down dark alleys alone with my camera at night.

Okay, there were some obvious flaws with this solution. After a half dozen scares, I started asking friends to come along and watch my back. 

The series has evolved over time. In the late 1990’s I realized the need to always bring lighting equipment and colored gels with me (I had used lights only rarely before that). I would still use my lights sparingly, but year after year my images had more and more of my lighting. In 1996 I switched to a 120 Hasselblad camera – a big upgrade from the 35mm Nikon I had been using, resulting in incredibly sharp and detailed images. In 2004 I found myself in a position where I could sustain myself through my art alone. I stopped doing the commercial photography (mostly architectural and Interiors) that had been my bread and butter, and this allowed me to travel extensively, adding dozens of new cities to this body of work.

But the heart of the series has always been my drive to dignify the places, and by extension, the people who are cast away. By transforming these locations into theatrical sets (made easier when I started bringing lights), I have always tried to create a stage without players, leaving it up to the viewer to create their own characters and drama, and hoping that ultimately the viewer feels compelled to step into the scene themselves, as I did over 30 years ago.