GLIMMER AND CREEP
David Johnson
2025 Summer Residency
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Glimmer and Creep was photographed over an 11-week summer residency on Governors Island. The project reflects on the island’s layered history, its current configuration, and possible futures, set against the persistent glow of New York City’s light pollution, which registers as class nine, the highest on the Bortle Scale.
Governors Island rests quietly between Manhattan and Brooklyn. After more than 200 years of military control, it was returned to New York in 2003 for the nominal fee of a single dollar. Just a short ferry ride from the city, the island feels like a world unto itself, suspended in murky water and washed in skyglow. Movement slows and time stretches, call it “island time.”
Each evening at 10:30, the island closes to the public. Light is the only trespasser, casting a perpetual twilight. It is never fully dark, never clearly lit. Seagulls guard their nests. Rats sift through the day’s debris. Through the quiet, sounds echo across the water—party boats, helicopters, motorcycles in Jersey, barges unseen, and the occasional whistle.
These images are made in the in-between: between light and dark, ownership and abandonment, infrastructure and erosion. A space suspended between what is managed and what begs to be wild, between access and distance. A place in flux—shifting, settling, waiting.
Here, in a city of millions, I am alone and bathed in light—a witness meant to be among others, in the darkness of an island that resists full clarity.
Governors Island rests quietly between Manhattan and Brooklyn. After more than 200 years of military control, it was returned to New York in 2003 for the nominal fee of a single dollar. Just a short ferry ride from the city, the island feels like a world unto itself, suspended in murky water and washed in skyglow. Movement slows and time stretches, call it “island time.”
Each evening at 10:30, the island closes to the public. Light is the only trespasser, casting a perpetual twilight. It is never fully dark, never clearly lit. Seagulls guard their nests. Rats sift through the day’s debris. Through the quiet, sounds echo across the water—party boats, helicopters, motorcycles in Jersey, barges unseen, and the occasional whistle.
These images are made in the in-between: between light and dark, ownership and abandonment, infrastructure and erosion. A space suspended between what is managed and what begs to be wild, between access and distance. A place in flux—shifting, settling, waiting.
Here, in a city of millions, I am alone and bathed in light—a witness meant to be among others, in the darkness of an island that resists full clarity.
COLLABORATORS/SUPPORT
Glimmer and Creep has been made possible with fiscal support from Coastal Carolina University and the generous participants of David’s Patron Print Program, additional technological support from the Penumbra Foundation.
People
