Outside Amarillo

Texas Panhandle  2006 | View large image

Most recently in Coming into Focus: A Snapshot of Photography at the Nasher at the Nasher Museum of Art | Durham NC

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MJ Sharp’s long-exposure night photographs often bring into focus scenes that could be missed during the day, as in this forty-minute exposure of an abandoned silo and its companion house. Taken on an overcast night, with the moon often obscured by cloud cover, the available light was too dim for Sharp to focus her 4×5 Graflex bellows camera on the scene. A passing state trooper, noticing the photographer’s parked car, assisted Sharp by pointing his police spotlight on the silo while she focused her camera, then drove away.

Sharp began producing night scenes in 2004 as a way of exploring the otherworldliness lent to banal settings when illuminated by streetlight or moonlight. The glow produced as white buildings continue to reflect light well after sunset heightens the solitude and calm of Sharp’s nighttime photography. These objects seem to emit an interior radiance that is normally invisible to the human eye and only evident when photographed. Sharp also plays with our experience of time, allowing her shutter to remain open for periods ranging from three minutes to three hours, thereby extending the fleeting moment traditionally thought to be captured by photography and making visible a scene impossible to experience in real time.

— Nasher Museum of Art