Night Procession

Night Procession is a quietly powerful and poetic photobook by British artist Stephen Gill, created over the course of three years (2014–2017) in the dark forests of southern Sweden. Using motion-triggered infrared cameras, Gill captured the night-time behavior of wild animals without direct interference — foxes, wild boars, deer, mice, owls, snails, birds — all emerging from the darkness, bathed in a ghostly glow, each image a private apparition.

Rather than conventional wildlife photography, this work embraces the unknown and relinquishes control. It is the animals who trigger the cameras, the forest itself that chooses what appears. Gill composes only by intuition, placing his cameras where he believes a deer might drink or an owl might perch — composing the absence, waiting for nature to fill the frame.

What emerges is a kind of ritual. A procession of animals, one by one, like sacred figures in a forested chapel. Each photograph feels both timeless and intimate, like peering into a hidden dimension. These are images that suggest sound even in silence, presence even in absence.

The book includes a reflective literary essay by Karl Ove Knausgård, who interprets the images as windows into a world beyond human perception — not fantastical, but real and unknowable.

Produced by Nobody Books, this finely crafted edition features a three-part clothbound hardcover with foil embossing, printed on Mohawk superfine and Takeo papers, and includes a separate 16-page booklet with Knausgård’s full text. Each copy is signed by Stephen Gill. The book was awarded the Benrido HARIBAN Award in 2017.

Hardcover, 27.0 x 21.6 cm, 0.972 kg, 160 pages, English
ISBN: 9780957536937

About the Author

GPSR

Publisher / Manufacturer: Nobody Books
Country of origin: Sweden
Website: https://www.nobodybooks.com

Email: stephen@stephengill.co.uk
Address:
Stephen Gill AB
Stenängavägen 132
271 75 Glemmingebro
Sweden