Ithra - CIERAN MURPHY

Captured in the US. Marfa, Texas is the traditional, ancestral, unceded territory of the Jumano Nation, Lipan Apache, and Mescalero Apache past and present.

In the midst of the pandemic’s first summer, lockdowns and uncertainty had transformed Marfa, Texas into a ghost town. I found myself wandering the streets, captivated by the landscape and architecture of the town and its gentrification by artist Donald Judd in the 1970s. At night, the buildings—many of which Judd owned—lingered in the dark, shuttered and secretive, an occasional light penetrating through the pitch black. It was ominous, likely aided by the momentous weight of the pandemic and how I felt during that time. I decided to photograph some of Judd’s buildings in a different light than previously portrayed. Using construction lights, car headlights, the full moon and the glow of distant neon, I set out over a series of evenings around the witching hour to capture them. During those evenings, the rare comet Neowise was visible in the sky, adding to the surreal and mysterious energy that was gripping us all. My photographs of Judd’s buildings represent the eerie feeling of the world at a very specific moment in time. Usually bustling with tourists and seen exclusively by day, this dark period required a different perspective. Judd’s buildings were full of his sculptures and paintings, hanging unseen and in limbo, waiting for a living soul to observe them once again.