"If I had any other comments, the only one would be more a comment on night photography in general than on anything in particular in this show. While it might be considered bordering on heresy coming from someone like myself who built my reputation largely on night photography and colored light, I think we are running the risk of night photography turning into a hackneyed, predictable genre like countless others that have gone before.

"We're past the point of knowing what most things look like when they are photographed at night and/or lit up with colors. Just because something is photographed at night, and the exposure took two hours doesn't make it cool. I think if I see another red tree or cactus at night I might barf, and I've been more guilty than most. If we want to keep the thing alive that drew us to photographing at night, that feeling of discovering something new, something not seen before, I think we need to take it somewhere it hasn't already been.

"It's not the night itself that drew us to photograph at night, but more the metaphor the night presented, which was the sense of the unknown. That unknown is what we need to search for, wherever it can be found."

William Lesch, Juror
"From Tucson to . . . "
December 2004