‘Day for Night’ collects 70 mostly unpublished photographs taken by Shibata between 1980 and 1988.
The sequence interweaves night photographs with others taken during the day, but the apparent simplicity of the work ends here: the night scenes, characterised by the almost theatrical presence of intense light sources, seem like the subject of a Hopper painting, dreamlike and evocative. The photographs taken during the day, on the other hand, are filled with shadow areas, with the dark tones of trees and rocks rooting our eyes in the reality of the present, in stark contrast to the atmosphere of suspension that characterises the nocturnal images.
In Day for Nightthe roles of light and shadow are reversed: “The title gives the book another level” says Shibata: “I discovered this technique as a kid, the day the film ‘Rawhide’ was shown on TV, but until now I had never seen my work from this perspective”.
The result is a book that confuses and surprises, not only the viewers, but also its author.
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