Night Vision: Dan Richards and Helen McGhie

Writing and photography come together to reveal what really goes on after dark. Dan Richards lifts the lid on all things nocturnal in his latest book Overnight: Journeys, Conversations and Stories After Dark; and Helen McGhie’s surprising and powerful images conjure the experience of dark sky encounters.

Dan Richards is a writer and broadcaster. His first book Holloway was a collaboration with Robert Macfarlane & Stanley Donwood in 2012. Since then he written four further books, The Beechwood Airship Interviews, Climbing Days, Outpost, and Overnight. His BBC Radio 4 series, Only After Dark, was broadcast to acclaim in 2022. Dan has written for the New York Times, Observer, Economist, Esquire, and Monocle. He lives in Edinburgh.

Helen McGhie is a photographer, practice-based researcher and Senior Lecturer at the School of Digital Arts (SODA) at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her creative research explores the still, moving and sonic image to create new encounters with photography, often in non-art contexts, to engage diverse audiences in new, unexpected ways. She has worked extensively in Northumberland International Dark Sky Park, in collaboration with the dark-sky charity, Kielder Observatory Astronomical Society.