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  • Long read

Our complicated love affair with light

Sunlight is essential, but our relationship with artificial light is less clear cut. It expands what’s possible; it also obscures and polices. In this long read, Lauren Collee pits light against night, and reveals the shady places in between.

  • Article

How light pollution affects our circadian rhythms

Too much of the wrong sort of light can send our natural cycles off-kilter – is city life messing with your circadian rhythm?

  • Article

The ‘epileptic’ in art and science

From scarred outsiders in literature to the cold voyeurism of medical films and photography, people who experience seizures and epilepsy are rarely shown in a compassionate light in popular culture.

  • Article

Dress and the magic of touch

Fashion, of course, is largely about appearance, but the feeling of clothes on your skin is a complex sensory experience. Shahidha Bari contemplates the human connections in the business of creating and wearing clothes.

All stories (38)

Images

  • A blind girl reads the Bible by touch to her illiterate family in the dark; one man is tempted to go out and enjoy drunken revels in the daylight; representing light and darkness of the understanding. Engraving by W. Ridgway, 1871, after G. Smith.
  • A blind girl reads the Bible by touch to her illiterate family in the dark; one man is tempted to go out and enjoy drunken revels in the daylight; representing light and darkness of the understanding. Engraving by W. Ridgway, 1871, after G. Smith.
  • A blind girl reads the Bible by touch to her illiterate family in the dark; one man is tempted to go out and enjoy drunken revels in the daylight; representing light and darkness of the understanding. Engraving by W. Ridgway, 1871, after G. Smith.
  • A blind girl reads the Bible by touch to her illiterate family in the dark; one man is tempted to go out and enjoy drunken revels in the daylight; representing light and darkness of the understanding. Engraving by W. Ridgway, 1871, after G. Smith.
  • A blind girl reads the Bible by touch to her illiterate family in the dark; one man is tempted to go out and enjoy drunken revels in the daylight; representing light and darkness of the understanding. Engraving by W. Ridgway, 1871, after G. Smith.
  • The fourth day of Creation: God sets the sun, the moon, the stars and the signs of the zodiac in the firmament, in order to divide the light from the darkness. Engraving by H. Lochner.
  • Saint Geneviève is holding the Bible and a torch which an angel lights with a candle but a devil tries to extinguish with bellows; Notre Dame Cathedral in the background. Engraving.
  • A snake, light brown in colour with dark brown patches and wavy line on its back, edged with white: includes outline drawing of the tail. Watercolour, ca. 1795.
  • A dark room with light coming in from the top and a door to the right; with the AIDS red ribbon above a logo featuring a small box bearing two hands coming in from the left and right and the words 'Abraco' [hug]; an advertisement for 1st December, World AIDS Day by Lisboa Camara Municipal, Cultura. Colour lithograph by Serigrafia Rujoca, Lda., ca. 1990's.
  • The first day of Creation: God, borne by a cloud, divides the light from the darkness. Line engraving by T. de Leu after M. de Vos.
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