McGhie, H., 2026.

Dark Practices: Photography as Counter-Representation, from a Dark Sky Observatory to a Winter Urban Garden

This paper examines practice-based photography in dark places as a condition for new ways of knowing and encountering place. Drawing on two community-embedded research projects -- Close Encounters (PhD, 2017-2024), developed with Kielder Observatory in Northumberland International Dark Sky Park, and Entangled Light (in development), situated in a threatened urban community garden in Salford -- I explore how 'dark practices' disrupt the dominant visual strategies organisations use to shape public identity. At Kielder, staged, narrative-informed photography challenged astrophotography conventions, using darkness as context and method. In Entangled Light, microbial energy harvested from winter soil powers the light that illuminates photographic subjects, positioning the living ground as an active, more-than-human presence whose energy determines what can be illuminated and known.