Artist Spotlight: September, 2024

Jürgen Lobert and Lisa Ryan

“Industrial Beauty–Luminous Desert”
August 18 through November 3, 2024

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Tell us a little about your backgrounds.

Jürgen:

I am a German citizen, born, raised, and educated around Frankfurt, Germany. I moved to the US in 1991. I have a PhD. in chemistry, with focus on atmospheric chemistry and contamination control. I will retire from that at the end of 2024, to focus more on photography.

Lisa:

My family was always interested in the arts: one grandfather was the painter John Graham, and another collected works of Danish painters for the Glypotek Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark.

I graduated from Pratt Institute of Art in New York, got a master’s degree in counseling and art therapy, and ultimately a doctorate in Counseling Psychology. I have used art in my work with clients over the years.

How did that lead you to Night Photography?

Lisa:

Even in art school, I was painting pictures of cities at night, with windows framing the night sky. I was drawn to photography—which in the 1970s was film—with its beauty and its limitations, particularly with respect to low light photography. As the digital revolution began, like Jürgen, I took some classes and started going to a Night Photography Meetup, where we met. With improvements in digital technology, I found that I could make the images I had long envisioned. I also made the transition to drawing and painting with light. Now I could add light, and interpret the subjects, not just document them. I could even create images made of light. I also offer workshops and give talks to camera clubs and local groups.

Jürgen:

I joined the Boston Camera Club in 2010 and one of the members asked me what I was interested in. I mentioned that I have been intrigued by low light or night photography, and he suggested that I check out a program for that at the New England School of Photography (NESOP). I enrolled in that in 2011, learned night photography (and Lightroom) and ran with it.

Fifteen months later, I started organizing night photography Meetups and in 2013 founded the Greater Boston Night Photographers (GBNight) Meetup group. That year I gave my first presentation on night photography, by invitation of Lisa and the Duxbury Camera Club. A few years later, I started teaching the very workshop that taught me how to do it at NESOP until that school closed down. I then started teaching at the Griffin Museum of Photography, where I still am.

We know you are showing together. Do you shoot together or collaborate in other ways?

We met shortly after we both learned night photography, Lisa in 2010 and Jürgen in 2011, both in different workshops dedicated to that. When Jürgen started organizing Meetups, Lisa participated and we formed a very close friendship. We not only go out together to make photos at night, but also to organize Meetups together. Jürgen is the organizer, and Lisa the co-organizer of the GBNight Meetup group.

We often submitted to the same calls for art, and, for the Meetup group, started arranging and curating exhibits for the GBNight members, always with night photography as the focus. In 2016, we curated a night photography exhibit titled Night Becomes Us for the Art Complex Museum, which showcased 90 images from 12 photographers. The exhibit was covered in several local media.

Another important aspect of our growth as artists and photographers are the critique groups that we have formed with friends. The opportunity to learn from each other and to give and receive feedback is incredibly useful. It helped us learn to curate projects and bodies of work. We have even traveled together to Iceland and the American Southwest to work on projects, such as the images in “Luminous Desert.”

We both continue to arrange photography events for the Meetup group and enjoy going out together to capture the beauty of the night whenever we can.

We’ve shown Night Photographers here in group shows before. They seem like a tight knit community. Are you involved in it in any way?

Night photography is still a niche type of photography, but one that has become substantially more popular with the onset of digital cameras. Newer technology makes it very much easier to image the Milky Way, for example, with instant feedback and technical and optical possibilities that were never available in the film days. The community has dedicated social media groups, but is no longer really a tight knit group overall. It’s now 10’s of thousands of people, instead of hundreds.

We do both stay very much in touch with that, both through our activities for the Meetup group, and also through active contributions on those social media outlets on Instagram and Facebook.

Another special aspect is that light painting and drawing is a niche within the niche of night photography. It has also grown and has many different styles and approaches. This is a community that is still developing, and is generally less represented in the art exhibit world, but is perhaps a tighter knit sub-community than other types of night photography. Light painting is an essential part of Lisa’s “Luminous Desert” body of work.

Can you tell us a bit about a typical night shoot?

Local photo shoots usually starts by picking a topic (industrial, we love “gravel” yards, nature, moon rises or sets, Milky Way, cityscapes, etc.). Then we scout out location options online. We heavily use Google Maps in satellite view for that, because you can zoom in, and we also use Street View imagery to actually see that location. We look at parking options, access, road blocks, things that might block access at night (Massachusetts is notorious about having everything “closed after dark”), and the general vicinity. The online part ends with checking the weather (everything but rain or snow is OK), sunset or moon rise, tides when on the waterfront, and perhaps special events or traffic that might get in the way.

Once all that is settled, we go out and meet at the location that was pinpointed to a few feet with GPS coordinates. From there, we roam around with our equipment shouldered and look for either the main attraction or, if it is a broader topic, suitable compositions. Very often we let ourselves get surprised by something we didn’t expect.

For group events, we often like to challenge members (or ourselves) to use specific gear (one lens only, no tripods at night) or to approach the shoot with a concept or technique in mind, such as “Urban Forest” or “Double Exposures.”

When we go out together, we love ending our photo sessions with a hot cup of tea and some sweets in the car while chatting and catching up.

Is there anything else you’d like us to know about your work?

For both of us, from an artistic perspective, we still do not specialize in ONE coherent body of work, as many famous photographers do. Examples are Henri Cartier-Bresson, who was famous for his street photography, and nothing much else. There are people who publish only black and white landscapes, or people who only create Milky Way astro-landscapes. For us, night photography is too interesting to reduce it to just one type. We truly enjoy all of it: cityscapes and super bright industrial installations, super dark landscapes with the Milky Way shining above, creating our own visual impression with light painting and drawing, or using the ample light of moon rises or no light at all during urban exploration. And yes, we do roam around pitch black dark, abandoned houses at night!

Lisa:

For me, it’s really all about night photography and adding light in darkness. In addition to Luminous Desert, I am working on several ongoing projects including Invisible Nights, a night infrared series; The Same Place. Twice, a series of in-camera double exposures; and The Urban Forest, places where nature and city life intersect. A solo exhibit of light drawn figures, Becoming Light, was shown in one of the Griffin Museum of Photography’s satellite galleries last summer.

I will begin work on a sequence of images of light drawn figures in water, something one can only do in the late summer in these latitudes. We are also starting to talk about where we’ll go to shoot the next total solar eclipse in 2026. Maybe Spain.

Jürgen:

When I started digital photography around 2000, I always teased people by saying that I specialize in not having a photographic specialty. Once I got more serious about that hobby, and particularly after that impactful 2011 night photography workshop, that was quickly reduced to “I specialize in night photography”, period. Over time, I picked up daytime long exposure photography, which is really very much like night photography, just during the day, and a bit of infrared, but that turned out to become mostly night photography as well. Night photography is about 90% of what I do with my camera, not counting the occasional stray photo opportunity.

I do have a number of active and ongoing projects that do quite well represent what I do. Aside from Industrial Beauty that is on display here, my collection of Infralucent Clouds (infrared landscapes at night) had its own solo exhibit at a Griffin Museum affiliate space. My Ominous Architecture is made of black and white daytime long exposures and Down in the Dungeon is my collection of very dark abandoned places.

I enjoy teaching and sharing my knowledge and insight, online or in person by running workshops. As a scientist by education, I enjoy exploring technical details, photography techniques and approaches and challenging established notions that don’t make sense to me. I also have a photography learning channel on Patreon, which specializes in night and long exposure photography, with the occasional infrared thrown in. Equipment reviews are published in social media outlets and reach a lot of people.