A photographic ode to vanishing starlight, Protege Noctem by Mattia Balsamini & Raffaele Panizza confronts light pollution’s ecological and existential toll, urging us to defend the fragile beauty of darkness.
The project meticulously captures the ecological and existential fallout of Artificial Light at Night (ALAN), revealing a world where the Milky Way—a cosmic cornerstone of human wonder—has been all but obliterated from collective sight. Through vivid and unsettling imagery, Balsamini and Panizza document a crisis that is both environmental and deeply symbolic: a civilization severed from its celestial roots.
Their work deftly visualizes the pervasive reach of light pollution, extending from the terrestrial to the celestial. Urban landscapes are shown drenched in an unforgiving blue spectrum glow, implicated in the disruption of circadian rhythms and linked to escalating rates of diseases like cancer and depression. Yet, Protege Noctem does not confine its gaze to the human condition; it also mourns the broader ecological havoc—migratory birds disoriented, insects teetering on extinction, and plants unable to detect seasonal cues. The tension between the cold, invasive luminescence of modernity and the fragile, intricate balances of nocturnal ecosystems forms the crux of this visual narrative.
Balsamini and Panizza’s lens is not only an instrument of critique but a rallying cry for an emergent resistance. From grassroots citizen initiatives to urgent pleas from the European Parliament’s Biodiversity Strategy 2030, the project chronicles efforts to reclaim the sanctity of darkness. As their images oscillate between the desolate and the defiant, they evoke a paradoxical hope—that by confronting the artificial glare, we might yet restore the shimmering infinities that tether us to our place in the cosmos.
