As I sit in the odd darkness of our smoke-filled skies, this photo essay from the Global Oneness Project feels particularly poignant and timely. The post for today is copied below (follow the link connected to “Dark Skies.” to view the photos):
Darkness is a theme that photographer Roberto “Bear” Guerra documents in this new photo essay “Dark Skies.” Due to light pollution, dark skies—a term indicating places around the world where one can experience the stars in our Milky Way Galaxy —are endangered. Bear said, “Given the myriad ways in which we humans have all but severed our connection to the natural world, perhaps none will prove to be as profound as the loss of the night sky and of our connection to the dark.” These photos question our collective discomfort with darkness. They invite us to reconsider our fear of the dark and to welcome the night sky as a window into the exploration of mystery and awe.
Bear writes, “This photo essay was conceived as a meditation on our profound distancing from the natural world—of which we are all just one small part. What we are currently experiencing during the pandemic is yet another manifestation of this loss. And although the city streets where I made many of these photographs are now empty, I hope that these images will still help us to consider how we might reconnect—with the night, with the natural world, with each other, with ourselves.”
“Dark Skies” and its theme of darkness is an invitation for students to embrace their imagination. “I wonder,” Bear writes, “how I can guide my own child to embrace the night and understand that without darkness we are not just incomplete…we fail to dream.”