Night Work, New Jersey

In urban industrial areas shapes are defined more clearly in the dark and under the unnatural colors of security lights and passing reflections. Simplified in their patterns of classic cones, cylinders and rectangles, the buildings that teemed with human activity by day become sculptural, almost abstracted at night. Scale and distance become difficult to measure and time is compressed in the stillness of the long exposures. The patterns and colors reflect a world more theatrical than real. The images, distilled by color and darkness, challenge our knowledge of the familiar: it is as if the camera at night has stripped away the daytime skin of the industrial landscape to expose the bones and gristle glowing beneath it. Many of the sites I photographed have already disappeared as New Jersey yields its industrial past to high rise luxury housing along waterfronts with views and train lines with convenient transport to New York City.