"The photography I most respect pulls something out of the ether of nothingness"

Paul Graham

In the spring of 2018, Michael Stryder was newly sober and living in Omaha, trying to make sense of what felt like a newfound appreciation for life, for words, for art. An awareness of what it felt like to be clean and free of the ties of
addiction. It is from this perspective that he began to create these dark and beautiful photographs.

 

It takes special eyes to make the things that are seemingly normal appear transcendent. Alive. Aware. These are images that are moments captured that we can, as the viewer, immediately understand. A young boy stands in the darkness, outside a fast food restaurant, holding his bike. A woman sits alone in the dark, on a bench, awaiting something. Anything. Fireworks explode in the darkness, illuminating a fence. There is both a menace and a comforting simplicity to the work. As if you are in danger but feel aren't aware. Somehow safety blankets you.

 

There are moments in looking at these works of art, when you get a sense of complete honesty and loneliness of Night. Of being reborn into the darkness. Of a world that Michael Stryder has simply stumbled into, and captured for all of us to see.