“Through James' lens, these ephemeral moments are transformed into gorgeous abstractions of light, color and landscape that feel simultaneously cosmic and earthly. In the words of juror Alex Lin, Nightairs ‘achieves the most out of the essential elements it takes to make a book: ink and paper. I can't imagine a way you could create a larger impact with these basic materials.’ Saddle stitched and printed on a single stock of uncoated paper, with each image bled across the gutter and enclosed with a black border, the spellbinding patterns of light James captures are further elevated by the sophisticated approach to the book's materiality."

- 2023 Paris Photo–Aperture First PhotoBook Award shortlist citation

Winner, 2023 Best Dutch Book Designs

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Twenty-six species of the insect family Lampyridae, commonly known as fireflies, have been identified in the foothills of Appalachian Ohio. For a brief moment at the very end of their lives, nineteen of these species communicate with silent, bioluminescent displays of diverse flash patterns and colors—a procession of codes varying in precise accordance to habitat, season and time of night. With long exposures, I have recorded these dialects of light since 2019, exploring one luminous facet of life in the temperate deciduous forests of Ohio’s Allegheny Plateau, which host a near-infinite diversity of natural forms evolving through seasonal change atop eroded mountains and the stratified sediments of ancient seas.

Exquisitely HR-UV printed in full color on uncoated paper by the legendary Robstolk printing house in Amsterdam, with hand-mixed yellow ink from Japan and extended black to convey the depth and texture of night.

• Published in 2023 by Fw:Books

• Printed by Drukkerij robstolk

• Softcover, 80 pages

• 25 x 32 cm

• ISBN 978-90-832858-6-3

SIGNED COPY ($75) Each copy is signed and hand-wrapped in a press sheet from the day the book was printed.

For orders outside of the United States, contact here.