Collection: Night Walks by Magda Labuda

Exhibition dates: 17 - 30 April 2023

About Night Walks

Brisbane photographer Magda Labuda’s second solo exhibition ‘Night Walks’ showcases 28 photographs of The River City (Brisbane / Meanjin), revealing its beauty at night. 

“Cities look completely different when they’re light and dark.”

Magda usually photographs during daylight hours, thus creating this body of work has been an experimental process, she says.  

“Only in recently have started to venture out at night, taking myself on ‘Night Walks’. All these walks always took about 3 - 4 hours each.”

“I’m not usually one to go fully manual, however this project was produced with fully manual settings on my camera. 

“In exploring the manual settings, I set myself the challenge of using no more than 100 ISO. That means a very long exposure. Most of these images were captured across 15 to 30 seconds.”

ISO refers to the sensitivity of film—its "light gathering" ability. The higher the ISO setting, the easier it will be to take photos in low light. Setting the challenge of a maximum ISO meant Magda used her mastery of the camera’s other fine-tuned settings to capture the stunning light effects in these images. Magda’s night walks capture the balance between comfort and exploration, the familiar and the unfamiliar. 

“Doing these night walks, I went to a few places I don’t usually go to. Doing this project was also a great way to see the places I do go, but see them change under cover of darkness. I would start photographing earlier, to get the transition from the golden hour to when it is pitch black.”

By experiencing Magda’s change in perception while exploring the city during night rather than day, we can also experience the cityscape in a new light.