We were so pleased to welcome MJ Sharp in October for a conversation about her Fulbright Scholar Award work to investigate what we lose when we lose natural night and darkness to the ubiquity of contemporary light pollution. Watch the full presentation and discussion here.
MJ spent last year in Cornwall, England to capture the standing stones on film at night. She began her talk, though, by noting that her interest in light pollution and the dark goes back a few decades. She treated us to a recounting of her work with Elizabeth Brownrigg to capture the sea turtle “boil” (hatch) at Oak Island and notes that even then citizens were asked to be involved in helping nature take its course. Oak Islanders were invited to turn off their lights at night so the newly-hatched turtles could correctly follow the moonlight toward the waiting sea rather than turn toward the brighter lights in town.
Whether it was walking us through the ways in which bats’ and birds’ feeding and sleep cycles are affected by too much light, a new big city development interfering with an established major art installation designed to capture light, or simply the science of how our eyes work at night, MJ’s presentation deftly introduced us to the many contours of our human impact on natural light cycles. For further exploration and links to background information about the many stories and examples she shared, please visit her website.
Her stories and photos of her time in Cornwall capped the presentation, with tales about traipsing through muddy fields at night, sheep annoyed with her equipment, and her own awe at the deep history of these places.
About her goal for sharing this work MJ stressed that she doesn’t want to curate the experience for us, just as none of us can really know what happened 5000 years ago
Please visit our vimeo channel for this engaging conversation.
The staff photographer for most of the 1990s for the Durham-based Independent, MJ Sharp is now a Lecturing Fellow at Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies. She was in residence at the University of Exeter’s Environment and Sustainability Institute (ESI) in Cornwall for the 2021–2022 academic year. Learn more about MJ and her work here: www.mjsharp.com.
a very enjoyable “travelogue” and conversation following – thank you!
i thought i might hear someone mention barbara brown taylor’s book, learning to walk in the dark:-)