Eerie Photographs of a Quiet Polish Town After Dark

For The City Sleeps, Polish photographer Lukasz Biederman captures the quiet darkness that descends upon the village streets at night. In the suburbs of Lower Silesia, after most everyone has settled into their beds, the artist stalks the mysterious corners of the town. As the sun sets, his photographs are lit only by an eerie blend of street lights and the faint purple remains of a setting sun. Biederman’s uncanny, silent spaces appear both vacant and inhabited, the rare lighted window providing only the vaguest hint of life.

These towns, seen here like ghosts of busy days gone by, carry with them a rich and fraught history. Like carefully preserved time capsules, they house structures dating back to the Medieval period. Still more of the towns’ monuments have been in place since World War II and have survived a period of Stalinization and Polish Socialist realism. In these small suburbs, we find modern buildings alongside historical sites. Here, the comforts of home and the uncertainty of the night collide. As if in a moment of calm before an inevitable storm, dusk descends upon the homes, bringing with it echoes of the past and hopes for the future.

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