Edward S. Curtis’s 1914 photograph, ‘Dancing to Restore an Eclipsed Moon’, shows the Kwakiutl tribe of North American Indians circling a fire ‘to make a sky creature sneeze and disgorge the moon’. Raised arms are silhouetted against the sky, faces remain imperceptible, and bodies are shrouded in smoke. It is apt that such a mesmerising image should accompany the opening chapter of Nina Edwards’s beguiling book, which gallantly aims to subvert common views of darkness, both physical and metaphorical.
Given the enormous scope of her subject matter (from clothing to Christianity, electricity to the Enlightenment, Islam to the Industrial revolution, black holes to Steve Bannon, and Milton to the moon), it’s perhaps inevitable that some topics receive rather scant treatment (on one page the jump from disembowelling to unlit coastal paths is somewhat unnerving). But, for the most part, Edwards’s approach is considered and engaging as she explores the curious paradoxes and possibilities of ethereal half-shadows and ‘umbral blackness’.As
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