'Night Light'

Nocturnal scenes of San Diego’s ubiquitous taco stands and a massive shipyard are the subjects of “Night Light,” an exhibit at The Photographer’s Eye Gallery that will feature fine art images by Philipp Scholz Rittermann and Marshall Williams. This free show will open May 10 and run through June 7.

Rittermann and Williams are both accomplished San Diego artists, commercial photographers and teachers whose works have been shown at prominent venues locally, nationally and internationally.

When Philipp Scholz Rittermann stepped into the metal shell that was to become the hull of the Exxon Valdez, he could not envision that he was documenting the first chapter of a future catastrophe. The year was 1985, and four years later the oil tanker would run aground in Prince William Sound, Alaska, bleeding its cargo of crude oil into the sea and etching the ship’s name into the log of notorious environmental disasters.

Rittermann was a young man, recently arrived in the United States, when he landed an internship at the San Diego Museum of Photographic Arts, which led to his securing a pass to do night photography at the National Steel and Shipbuilding Co. (NASSCO) shipyard on San Diego Bay. The result is his collection, “Shipyard Nocturnes,” which will be shown at the nonprofit Photographer’s Eye Gallery.

One of the featured images in the exhibit is Rittermann’s large black and white print shot inside the Exxon Valdez as it was being built. The work is remarkable for both its artistic appeal and what it came to signify.

“I was standing inside one of the enormous holds and looking into this cavernous space that was the size of a cathedral on the inside, and an engineer walked by and I said, ‘So where are you putting the oil tanks?’ And he said, ‘You're looking at it.’ And I said, ‘Do you mean they go here?’ And he goes, ‘No, you're looking at it.’

“And I said, ‘Oh … this is the tank?’ And he goes, ‘Uh-huh,’ and walks away,” Rittermann said.

“I thought, geez, what happens when you put a zipper in this?” Rittermann recalled, “and then four years later, that's exactly what happened.”

Rittermann’s images stand as tributes both to industrial might and technology, and to the human fallibility that enabled such a disaster.

“While the images haven’t changed since I made them,” Rittermann said, “the way I feel about them has.”

Marshall Williams was inspired to create images of San Diego’s taco stands when he found himself waiting for a traffic light to turn green, and a neighborhood fixture caught his eye.

“I was staring at the taco stand across the street when it illuminated and in that moment I was a bit startled by the transformation,” Williams said. “I saw this structure in a way I hadn't seen it before."

“I came back to photograph it at the same time of the evening and from that point on I began to notice the different taco stands around town all shared many of the same elements, but no two seem to be the same,” he said.

The result is “Taco Stand Vernacular,” a collection of images that captures the folk nature of one of San Diego’s most common fixtures — one so common that it is easily overlooked. Williams photographs them as day yields to night, and he produces his images in black and white.

“As a photographer, we love that transitional moment between day and night when there is a balance and ‘best of both worlds’ from a lighting perspective,” he said. In daylight, these small structures are swallowed by their surroundings, he noted, “but in the early evening they are cloaked in a subdued ambiance and emitting their own light, exuding a sort of theatrical like presence.”

“This has been an exercise in taking the commonplace and attempting to elevate it to an object of appreciation,” Williams said. “If taking the time to observe the details of a taco stand can change our view of it, what other details have we missed or left unappreciated in the hustle of our busy lives?”

“Night Light” opens on May 10 and closes June 7. The gallery is open Fridays and Saturdays, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and by appointment. There will be an artists’ walk-through on opening day at 4 p.m., followed by a reception at 5 p.m. Artists Rittermann and Williams will conduct a night photography walkabout on May 15. Consult The Photographer’s Eye website for details.

Visit: https://www.thephotographerseyecollective.com/ and https://www.marshallwilliamsphotographs.com/taco-stand-vernacular

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