Night Vision

This project is a black and white photo series assembled from nocturnal wanderings in different locations, forming my own private ‘night vision’ voyage. The series focuses on vacant spaces near residential areas, where the night b/w photography mystifies otherwise everyday settings, turning them into objects of examination and observation. Throughout these wanderings I’m drawn to get a glimpse of what lies between what exists and what may exist, but the physical presence is negated.

Eyal Dinar, 2010


The empty environment gives the sense of a metaphor for the artist’s inner world. In this sense, the examination of everyday reality is a voyage to the depths of the artist’s psyche. The dark areas may represent the invisible and unconscious, and the tension between nature and the artificial elements could be a metaphor for internal struggles of concealment, discovery, restrained passion and fear. But beyond this, it is a subtle reality open to interpretation.

The viewer is witness to a dramatic, theatrical setting; the backdrop is present but the actors haven’t shown up yet, and the viewer is welcome, in his mind, to fill in what is yet to come.

Einat Ofir, Curator of contemporary art (text from the ‘Night Vision’ exhibition in Galerie Glass, Berlin, 2010)



Einat Ofir on Eyal Dinar’s series Night Vision

This series of photographs depicts seemingly everyday and banal nocturnal scenes of residential areas and lends them a mysterious, puzzling setting. The black and white photographs turn this environment into an object of examination and observation. In these photographs there is an encounter between dark areas and areas lit with artificial street lights. Often it isn’t clear where the actual objects end and their shadows begin. Sometimes complete segments of the frames are left in the dark, unsolved. This situation, where the viewer can’t fully grasp the composition, creates a sense of disorientation and discomfort.

By blacking out entire surfaces of the photographs, Dinar creates a disquieting reality, where an open space becomes a closed and sometimes claustrophobic one.

Dinar’s spaces are devoid of people, except for two works where there is a vague human presence. His photographs create a deterring sense of alienation and reveal the mysterious and threatening energy of everyday reality. Dinar, in essence, negates the varied colors of the photographed vegetation by using shades of black and white. In this way, his works encourage the viewer to examine more thoroughly the structure of the plants and the textures of their components.

These photographs create the somewhat paradoxical situation of learning to examine our environment in depth by using restrictive lighting.

In some ways this series corresponds with aesthetic Romantic concepts from the 18th and 19th centuries, which focused on the ethereal aspects of nature. The Romantic philosophers argued that we must unveil nature’s latent spiritual energies, which provoke profound emotional responses in us. The series also echoes the Romantic idea of the Sublime in art, which is stimulated in the viewer by the sight of sinister scenes that evoke the fear of the unknown, such as depictions of darkness and emptiness.

Dinar’s world is devoid of humans, where nature might savagely take over the environment, without human rule. Some of the works confront the complex, savage formations of nature with simple forms of artificial elements.

One photograph emphasizes the rift between the savage, dense vegetation and the asphalt road, which is uniform and continuous. In another photograph the vegetation has breached the fence that was supposed to restrict it. Another photograph shows carefully trimmed bushes, but sharp, savage branches burst forth behind them.

The empty environment gives the sense of a metaphor for the artist’s inner world. In this sense, the examination of everyday reality is a voyage to the depths of the artist’s psyche. The dark areas may represent the invisible and unconscious, and the tension between nature and the artificial elements could be a metaphor for internal struggles of concealment, discovery, restrained passion and fear. But beyond this, it is a subtle reality open to interpretation.

The viewer is witness to a dramatic, theatrical setting; the backdrop is present but the actors haven’t shown up yet, and the viewer is welcome, in his mind, to fill in what is yet to come.