This past Saturday (Full Crow Moon) nearly 40 intrepid Nocturnes took to the streets of Mare Island to photograph 100-150 year-old brick buildings, massive ship-building equipment, historic mansions, etc. – all part of our annual AlumNight event.
We will be posting work from the group on Flickr in the next few days – check back here to learn the top-secret tag!
For the last 30 years or so, Mr. Wessel has been photographing the American West. Not the mountains and redwoods, but the parking lots, body builders, nude beaches and absurdly trimmed shrubbery. And the light.
He is having his moment. There have been shows lately at the Robert Mann and Charles Cowles galleries in New York. The exhibition here has about 80 mostly black-and-white prints that cover his whole career, one whose arc may make you scratch your head yet again at how distracted and fickle the art world can sometimes be.
He‚s a photographer‚s photographer. Born in 1942, he grew up in suburban New Jersey, then studied psychology at Penn State, borrowing a Leica one day from his girlfriend‚s brother. „It really knocked me out,‰ he has recalled. „I had never really seen how a camera could describe something.‰
Wessel’s work is currently on display at SFMOMA, a short drive for me – I need to go soon. (I saw Avedon’s American West photographs at Stanford last week – wow!)
“Building with Green Windows, Moonlight” — Night photography of a building with green windows under moonlight at Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Vallejo, California.
This photograph was originally posted here in 2007 with no descriptive commentary. While updating the website I added the following narrative on March 18, 2025.
I had my first serious taste of night photography back in the early 2000s, not long before I made this photograph. While reading about the Bay Area Flyway Festival, I saw an announcement of a free introduction to the genre by a group known as “The Nocturnes,” the San Francisco Bay Area night photography group led by Tim Baskerville. Intrigued, I signed up, not knowing quite what I was getting into, and headed up the the Mare Island Naval Ship Yard for the session. I learned a lot — including how vibrant the night photography community was, along with some technical stuff that helped me make successful photographs. I was hooked.
During the following years by interest in the genre deepened and I returned many times to photograph the (mostly) abandoned structures at Mare Island. This photograph was a bit of a lucky catch. I was doing long exposure, tripod-based work that included star trails. Most of the subjects here were lit by moonlight or dim outdoor lighting. But I came upon this building before it was closed up for the night, and the interior fluorescent lights were still glowing in the window — and were quite green by comparison to the moonlit ambient light. I set up, made a couple of exposures… and the lights were suddenly shut off. But I managed to get this image first.
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Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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