11/02/2026
Coming up this Sunday, Nov 8! We're very excited to host UCSC professor Kyle Parry in celebration of his new book Ways of Seeing After Dark! The event will include readings and discussions on his book, excerpts from John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, and a fun darkness themed raffle! 3-4pm / free admission
Darkness is widely misunderstood, argues Kyle Parry. We take darkness as the enemy of sight, yet we can’t see without it. We call the worst parts of our lives dark, yet we wouldn’t be here without wombs, skulls, oceans, the moon, and other shadowed places. Ways of Seeing After Dark contends that darkness is not absence but presence, shaping how worlds are sensed, inhabited, and understood. Tracing links between John Berger’s influential Ways of Seeing and his more poetic later writings, Parry recasts contemporary conditions defined by light pollution, digital mediation, and racialized regimes of seeing. In dialogue with artists, critics, and astronomers, Parry reveals the dark as a multifaceted phenomenon with political and perceptual significance, calling for new ways of seeing with the night.
Kyle Parry is a writer and professor at UC Santa Cruz, where he teaches in a department called History of Art and Visual Culture, or HAVC. He lives in San Francisco with his partner and daughter.
