Michael Light, Starry Bright

The fact that I like Michael Light's work is always sort of surprising to me. Don't get me wrong, he's dynamic and inventive and all that jazz, but he's all about landscape and I'm a people person, photo-wise. Also he's almost painfully scientific in his methods, intrigued by the minutaie of using light particles and so on, and that sort of thing (I'm sorry) puts me to sleep. In my head, at least, I'd be Diane Arbus if it wasn't for my scientific inaptitude. I'd go to this photography club at university - they were very sweet and organised, and would hold these classes where a man with almost encyclopaedic knowledge of photography would try and explain the physics of photography; light refracting, you know. I'd sit there with my eyes straining to keep open, trying not to nod off. So I've nothing but admiration for Michael for being able to be so focused on that side.

He's well known for these series of photos of the moon, but what I think is really exciting is his photos of LA. LA's kind of a touchy subject for me at the moment. I had this swooping great dissertation idea about architecture and nostalgia and Los Angeles, but my dissertation supervisors didn't think it was going to work. I'm intrigued as all getout by Los Angeles. Don't get me wrong, I'm not sure I ever want to actually go there - I mean, it sounds a bit like hell, and if I had a spare five hundred pounds lying around I'd like to spend it on going somewhere I've been jonesing to go to forever - like Buenos Aires or Rio or somewhere else suitably South American where I can shut my eyes and click my ruby slippers and pretend to be in Macondo. But like everyone else in the world, I like LA for its freeways, which fill me with the same awe that you're meant to feel with natural phenomena - vast mountains, waterfalls, valleys. And, that idea in The Crying of Lot 49, the mantra of the freeways, and America, Keep It Bouncing, the eternal present of driving. Yum. This is what I like about these photos. What I like is that these photos, more than the moon ones, make me feel tiny and insignificant and human, like looking at stars.