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These Darkened Cities image series by Thierry Cohen is truly awe inspiring. Not only because he accurately portraits the skylines of major cities with no lighting whatsoever, but because the images remind us of the incredible show we city dwellers are missing every night.
To make these images, Cohen travelled to places far away from the cities but on the same latitude. While LA, San Francisco or Rio de Janeiro are buzzing with gigawatts of electricity, locations like Joshua Tree National park, the Mojave Desert, and the Amazon are completely dark. They see the exact same skies as their urban counterparts, just separated by some time, as Earth rotates on its axis. Cohen photographed and combined these skies with images of the cities, treated so they looked as though they were illuminated only by the stars. The result is what you see here.
Can you imagine if someone turned off all the lights every night so we could look up and enjoy the heavens for a couple of minutes? I’m sure it would make many people stop and think, and maybe gain and understanding of why our ancestors were so fascinated by the sky. After all, the stars were probably the first inspiration for mythology and science alike.
If you have never watched a sky like this, you should. Go to the Mojave or Atacama or the Valley of the Gods in Utah. I promise you: by turning off the lights, you will turn on a switch inside of yourself.
If you are lucky enough to be in Paris, you can go see Villes éteintes—Thierry Cohen’s exhibition—until tomorrow at Galerie Esther Woerdehoff, on 36 rue Falguière. [Thierry Cohen and GalerieEstherWoerdehoff via Le Journal de la Photographie]
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that’s creepy, zombie apocalypse levels of creepy
I think a city without any lights would be considerably darker than that.
It depends if there is any cloud cover.
Someone would probably fall down on the pavement, and sue the city.
LOL!
I was talking to my girlfriend about the stars at night the other day – it’s sad that some people in the city will go their entire lives without seeing the wonders of the night sky.
I can’t say I’ve ever seen anything as amazing as this in person – the best I’ve seen is high up in the Alps in a sleeping bag.
Just sent this guy an email enquiring about the price of them, I bet they’re expensive
wish they turned the lights off in London for a couple of hours so I could see the night sky. Would be pretty cool.
Doesn’t matter if one city turned off the lights, the villages and towns and other cities around in the UK are so close they’d block most of it out too.
Really this should be if the whole of the UK turned off their lights.
You should get yourself up to Kielder Forest during a clear night, no light pollution at all and the sky looks amazing.
Flagstaff, Arizona, is the world’s first “International Dark Skies City”. They have city ordinances in place to minimize light pollution. Basically, all lighting in the city must shine downwards and have a protective cowl to prevent light escaping directly upwards into the sky. Also, to help local astronomers, the street lights are of a type that emit light easily filtered by telescopes and post-processing software. The results are stunning.
http://southwestdesertlover.wordpress.com/tag/international-dark-sky-city/
its sad to think that the fact we illuminate are cities and lives at night probably insulates us the most against the amazing universe and science.
the reason the space race really happened and was so exciting was because people still could see these views and most people had seen them as children on up before the world powered on the lights.
i bet if we did turn of the lights you would see a very different appreciation of the science and the the space race again!