Because the night Four photographers take Shots in the Dark

brings with it mystery, ambiguity, and uncertainty. It impacts perceptions, causing us to question the corporeality of even our most immediate surroundings. Conversely, nighttime creates intimacy, anchoring us to what is knowable within the limited range of vision afforded us under its enveloping shroud. At the New Mexico Museum of Art, four photographers — Christopher Colville, Scott B. Davis, Michael Lundgren, and Ken Rosenthal — present their visions of the nighttime world in

The exhibition, organized by photography curator Kate Ware, is the counterpart to ,a show of nocturnes from the museum’s collection that opened in November. But where presents a number of works depicting nighttime activities, is focused almost exclusively on the impressionistic and intuitive aspects I of the state of darkness. According to Ware, there is no real theme beyond that, except that all of the photographers are working with nightscapes or with imagery that evokes nightscapes. opens Saturday, Dec. 15, in conjunction with the opening of the exhibition Carved & Cast: 20th Century

Colville, who is based in Phoenix, is the only photographer in the show who creates landscapes without taking actual pictures of them. He makes images directly on light-sensitive gelatin silver-coated paper — no camera necessary. Unlike photograms, in which light-sensitive material is exposed directly to a light source, Colville’s photographs are more like chemigrams, where the paper is manipulated through a chemical process to create an image. In his work, the agent used is ignited gunpowder. But despite the fiery, volatile nature of his technique, the images produced are evocative, atmospheric compositions. His Dark Hours Horizon 40 (2015) from the series Hours, for instance, is a smoky scene resembling a dust storm on the horizon at night, or perhaps a nighttime view obscured by a pane of muddy glass. It also recalls James McNeill Whistler’s painting and Gold – The Falling Rocket (circa 1875). Colville’s Ouroboros 4 (2017), another enigmatic composition, is less landscape-oriented in appearance than

At the center of is a vivid circular form that appears like a celestial vision in the clouds of a night sky.

Davis, who lives and works in San Diego, is not exclusively a landscape photographer, but Ware includes selections from his series which evoke a sense of the haunting beauty of the Southwestern wilderness at night. It’s possible that daytime shots of his tree lines and distant hills would look merely