Wendy Paton, Visages de Nuit
Wendy Paton allows herself to disappear in order to let her subjects emerge from the night. “My experience is that people act differently at night. They let their guard down. They become who they really are, or they transform themselves into someone, real or imagined, that they want to be. There are seemingly no restrictions at night. Life seems to become more free flowing as opposed to how people tend to act in the light of day.” For her, the night is both solemn and cheerful, open to desire and mystery. Her nocturnal portraits are both intimate and familiar. Intrigued by the mysterious and ever-changing nature of human personalities and their individual choices of expression, Paton was compelled to use people as her creative communication conduit. She did not plan out the details of this series in advance, instead allowed the creative process to evolve. She simply had the idea, and began capturing the moments and taking the pictures.
Visages De Nuit is a body of work consisting of a series of gelatin silver, black and white candid night images that are intended to provoke compelling and mysterious emotions of uncertainty.
"Among the Photographers whose work has inspired and propelled me to reach into the unfamiliar are Lillian Bassman, whose work has introduced me to a new, more fluid way of viewing the world, Edouard Boubat, for his acceptance of the simplicity both in his images and his words, Cartier Bresson, for capturing simply moments in time, and Michael Kenna, his dramatic night images were the first to draw me in to photograph after dark. It is a combination of all of them and my never-ending curiosity for the unknown that helped to conceive Visages De Nuit ” said Paton .