
The Days Change at Night
- Publisher
- Hat & Beard Press
- Year
- 2019
- ISBN
- 978-1-7320561-9-0
- Specifications
- Hardcover
206 pages
9.5 x 11.75 in
Designed by Brian Roettinger
Los Angeles could be described as Surrealism in full sunlight. Its physical debris, sooty palm fronds along crooked sidewalks, a maze of intertwined freeways and electric LED sunsets, is reminiscent of Ray Bradbury's city of the future. As a follow-up to Cerro Gordo, David Black's debut monograph, The Days Change at Night explores the paranormality of everyday life in the city. Part two of an LA trilogy, it picks up where Cerro Gordo left off, evoking the early-1980s punk aesthetic of Alex Cox's Repo Man, a city on the edge of an existential threat. The images present a cyclical day-to-night narrative, using the city's landscape as a depository of collected dreams: visual glitches that suggest the point of view of a passenger in a fast-moving car racing along the expansive freeway system, capturing the stark polarity of the city's opposing forces, light and dark, commercial and artistic, micro and macro, and posing questions about illusion, mortality and truth. The limited edition adds a VHS cassette with a video piece by Black as an audio-visual companion.