No Dark in Sight is an exhibit funded to convey how artificial light has colonized the night– as a dystopian condition rewriting our relationship to natural darkness. I am photographing in some of the brightest sites on night earth– including in my own community. I originally set out to explore where my practice as a studio artist intersected with sustainability. I now realize we live in the false promise of a post-industrial revolution– immersed in a dismantled biosphere with inventions that endanger ecosystems. This led me to meditate on sky culture and our disregard for its stability.

Natural darkness is disenfranchised by light pollution. Quality of light affects quality of life. My prints ask communities to explore the reasons why. Light trespass strikes at the core of my integrity as a visual artist. I need light to work. Once trained to see light as a friend, I now call it a frenemy. Photography means to “write with light”, which is why the camera seems so perfectly matched to tell the story of less dim nights. Artificial light is erasing our relationship to darkness. The biosphere, our most elastic ally, can no longer flex to the trajectory of the consumer appetite for synthetic light. Research proves its growing threat– from breast cancer to obesity to diabetes to sleep hygiene. Like cigarettes, secondhand light is consequential for those in its path. I am photographing along that path. I invite viewers to consider the energy used to make the night bright and the energy it would take to save those whom it endangers.

Look to most any culture to find light’s role in its conquest to defeat darkness. Institutionally, religiously, psychologically, art historically, and industrially, humans uniquely define light as a prerequisite for their triumph over darkness and key to evolution. Fear of darkness is understandable, but we would benefit from fear of artificial light. 

I have most currently made images at sites where manufactured light is heavily concentrated in already impoverished communities– thus it oppresses already underserved populations. Let us not overlook the value of natural darkness to American slaves who employed the visible starts to navigate towards freedom or to artists who depended on dark nights to perpetuate art history. From Tubman to Van Gogh, we are living under less starry nights with as many if not more challenges. 

Simply stated, night has an identity crisis. Artificial light explains why. No Dark in Sight implores viewers to consider and contextualize that grotesque condition. 

Award-winning artist Bill Davis has worked on six continents. Before his M.F.A., Davis moved from Chicago to Prague to maintain a studio and teach Photo History. Upon return to the U.S., Davis received international and domestic grants to work in Las Vegas, the Amazon Rain Forest, Machu Picchu and Cusco Peru, Paris- IESA (Institut d’Etudes Superieures des Arts), Galicia, Spain (Torre Pujales Foundation- Costa De Morte Museum of Contemporary Art), Korea (Rotary Fellow), Vermont (Cone Editions/WMU Technology Grant), Michigan (Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo- “Autism and Visual Art”) and exhibit in Kiev (Photo Kyiv), Spain (Ra del Ray), Australia (Federal Arts Funding Body), UK (University of Leeds), and Ukraine (Ohio Arts Council/CKSCP/Ukrainian Union of Art Photographers) where he presented his work to the city’s mayors and U.S. Ambassador Steven Pifer. In 2013 Davis was awarded a $25,000 fellowship to produce a study on children and young adults with autism. In 2016, Davis received the WMU Sustainability Project Grant funded by the Milton Ratner Foundation. In 2017 he was awarded the WMU IEFDF and FRACCA to photographically document the use of artificial light. This led to ongoing exhibits observing light pollution.

            Davis’ photos are in museum and private collections in the U.S. and abroad. As his work intersects with biography, sustainability, and digital culture, he has presented on these topics at in North and South America, Australia, Asia, and Europe- from Harvard to Karlovo University.

            From his Michigan-based studio Davis embraces silver, ink, chemistry, digital venture, and analog nostalgia- as core requirements for artists who identify as photographic imagemakers.