NEW YORK, NY.- Over the span of four years, photographer
Arthur Drooker documented the ephemeral wash of shifting twilight colors from the same spot at The Sea Ranch on the Northern California coast. The resulting images evoke emotional, meditative responses from viewers, mirroring the patience and stillness required of Drooker himself as he waited and watched for just the right moment to capture a particular resonance of light and color as day sifted into night.
In his introduction to the book, Drooker describes the challenges he faced while photographing twilight, including contending with ever changing atmospheric conditions and striving to maintain color accuracy. He notes, "I learned early on that the naked eye perceives twilight one way, which differs from how a digital camera records it, which ultimately differs from how it’s presented in this book." He concludes that all versions are correct within their specific contexts, accepting that twilight is as elusive in photographic technology as it is in nature.
Photographing in soft focus allowed Drooker to create images that invite viewers to engage with them personally. He writes, "Are these photographs brief flirtations with the sublime, a kind of Rorschach test for evoking memories and emotions, or, simply, studies in color and light? These lyrical abstractions resonate differently with each viewer.
The book's design presents a shifting flow in its pacing. With simple timestamp captions, some images appear singly while others are presented as diptychs, paired images that were taken mere minutes apart yet look so different from each other, emphasizing twilight's dynamic nature. The book's layout culminates in a grand grid of all the images.
In her essay, curator and author Deborah Klochko captures the essence of Twilight. "In a world replete with visual distractions, Drooker's greatest gift in his latest series, Twilight, is its pathway to stillness, to pausing long enough to learn to see."
Arthur Drooker is the author and photographer of American Ruins (Merrell, 2007), Lost Worlds: Ruins of the Americas (ACC, 2011), Pie Town Revisited (UNM Press, 2015), Conventional Wisdom (Glitterati, 2016), and City Hall (Schiffer, 2021). His work has been the subject of a feature story on CBS Sunday Morning and has been exhibited widely, including shows at the Virginia Center for Architecture and the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington, D.C.
Deborah Klochko has been the Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Museum of Photographic Arts since 2006. She has taught, lectured, and written extensively on photography and has curated more than 40 exhibitions throughout her career. She is the author of Picturing Eden and co-authored both Moment of Seeing: Minor White at the California School of Fine Arts and Create and Be Recognized: Photography on the Edge, in addition to numerous other publications.
“Twilight is the time when we see best. When we dim the light down, and the pupils open feeling comes out of the eye like touch. Then you can really feel color, and experience it.” – James Turrell
"Twilight refers not only to the soft glowing light in the sky when the sun slips below the horizon but also to a period of ambiguity or gradual decline. These literal and figurative meanings merge in my practice of photographing twilight while the pandemic, war, climate change, and political division disrupt our lives."–Arthur Drooker
Book Details:
Hardcover / 96 pages / 9" x 12"
Publisher: Arthur Drooker (2023)`
ISBN: 979-8218198039
