“With a flip of a switch, your presence can be seen and felt in the urban landscape,” says photographer Clarissa Bonet to the Phoblographer in an interview about her series, Stray Light. “As a city dweller, I’m fascinated with the ways in which our presence can be felt in the urban landscape even when we are not necessarily visible physically. I was contemplating this idea when I started my Stray Light project and realized the light emanating from building windows is a representation of this idea.” Clarissa makes photographs that truly are something out of a dream that takes a concept, skill, and creative vision. It balances the ideas of serenity and magic while creating a beauty that hypnotizes us like a dog to a treat. And in Clarissa’s photographs, you’ll find lots of treats.
All images by Clarissa Bonet. Used with permission. For more, please check out her website and her Instagram @clarissabonet.
Clarissa Bonet: The Photographer
Like so many other photographers, Clarissa was fascinated with photography growing up and loved taking Polaroids. She’d also often have a disposable camera in her backpack. In high school, she experienced it as an art form. She was hooked after her first class and knew she wanted to be an artist. She went on to study photography further.
Clarissa is a Hasselblad Heroine and, therefore, uses some pretty incredible camera gear. She shoots both Canon and Hasselblad depending on her needs. But typically, she reaches for Hasselblad first. For her, the X1D reminds her so much of the Mamiya 7 II film camera. She also uses the Hasselblad 907x 50C body, 28mm, 45mm, 90mm, and 135mm lenses. It’s years ahead of her Canon 5D Mk IV, but she’s demonstrated that it’s not about the gear, for sure.
Creative Vision
The Stray Light series is a a collage of images put together. “My aim was to present the viewer with an image that evokes the sense of mystery, beauty, and awe that I feel when looking at the city at night,” she tells us. “I decided to use the method of collage to isolate the windows and transport the viewer to a more of a psychological space. Omitting the buildings from the images makes it less about the architecture and more about the human connection existing within the landscape.” Indeed, it’s stunning, and we can’t really figure out a way that it could be done otherwise due to how light pollution works in the environment.
Commercial buildings tend to leave lights on in the building at night when not in use so entire floors could be lit up, whereas residential building windows generally are lit up only when someone is home, signaling the presence of people residing inside. Commercial buildings also tend to use one color temperature light bulb for the entire building, typically giving off either a white daylight-balanced light or a yellowish tungsten light. Residential buildings, however, have a variety of different kinds of light emanating from their windows, giving off a wider range of colors. Blue light typically indicates the presence of a tv or computer screen, magenta lights are often from LEDs used as grow lights for plants, and then you also have the typical daylight or tungsten bulbs. Curtains and other window treatments can also affect the color of the light emanating from windows. After capture, I also enhanced the color of the windows in post by tweaking the saturation.
Clarissa Bonet
The images are square because she considers it to be a perfect neutral form. Indeed, because of the randomness of the lights, you can’t really say that applying the traditional sense of composition makes any sense here. Instead, we get a pretty perfect use of the square format that’s otherwise tough to realize because composition truly doesn’t matter as much.
Her abstract view of the world comes from how she noticed the world around her when she moved to Chicago. To her, it was all visual clutter. “I felt I had to relearn how to see and photograph in this new environment,” Clarissa relates to us. “…I go out to make an image about something specific, such as the way people in public spaces seem to carve out a slice of private space for themselves, evidenced by the manner in which they sit in the plaza. By isolating that act for the viewer, I keep their attention in that moment and don’t let the viewer get distracted by some other random thing or action happening in the frame.” This is applied holistically throughout her work.
On AI and Algorithms
Clarissa feels like she’s still trying to tap into the essence of what it’s like to live in a contemporary city. After embracing her tools, she still isn’t sure how she feels about AI-generated images. “From the limited examples I’ve seen online, the generators appear to be powerful, with the ability to create some pretty amazing images,” she states. “If we’re talking about art vs. content, it comes down to the intention of the creator. I can see artists using AI as a tool to comment on something specific in the world.” The way she sees it though, most aren’t using it that way.
Surely, her images couldn’t be easily made by an AI algorithm.
AUTHENTICITY STATEMENT
The Phoblographer works with human photographers to verify that they’ve actually created their work through shoots. These are done by providing us assets such as BTS captures, screenshots of post-production, extra photos from the shoot, etc. We do this to help our readers realize that this is authentically human work. Here’s what this photographer provided for us.
