By its very nature, the city encompasses scenes of intensity, variety, and mystery. Reed Gustow’s photography captures elements of the myriad facets the city offers us after dark. Night intensifies illuminated color, deepens shadow, and becomes a source of emotional content, provoking anticipation, fear, or excitement, and introduces an element of mystery to scenes that would be mundane during the day. The views arrayed here invite viewers to look again at what they may have passed by, and to allow these images to surface feelings previously muffled by routine.
Reed Gustow has lived in Philadelphia for most of his life and has taken photographs since he was a teenager. From 2010 to 2019, he photographed more than one hundred events held by the city’s technical-creative community. Toward the end of that period, after reviewing much of his prior work, he became more serious about learning photography on a different level to improve his ability to elicit an emotional response from the viewer.
