The human eye adapts to changing light levels — a remarkable ability on which our vision depends. Yet this very adaptability makes us ‘blind’ to the actual brightness of artificial light sources around us.
In Exposure Value ZER0̸, I employ a photographic light-measuring system from the 1950s to map contemporary urban illumination in cities like Paris and London. By setting the camera to exposure value zero, a threshold once aligned with early artificial lighting conditions, the work reveals a temporal mismatch between past and present light regimes. Rather than simulating history, the images register how current environments exceed and distort earlier perceptual frameworks, exposing the often invisible excess of artificial light. In this way, the camera becomes a tool for measuring not only light, but historical change—positioning photography as a speculative device that connects technological, perceptual, and ecological transformations across time.
