Portland Nighttime Landscape

about Lucas DeShazer and night in Portland

Home to a diverse array of artists and arts organizations, named in 2006 by American Style magazine as the tenth best Big City Arts Destination in Oregon country, Portland still have the charm of a place of ’50s/’60s, so as captured in the photographies by Lucas DeShazer, especially at night, when no one is around and the motel signs are the only lights to show you where you are.

This is also a place of urban legends as that of the Green Man saying that since Portland’s founding, sightings of small green archers have been reported throughout downtown and, along with the archers, a celestial stag, a phantom building and a huge tree have been spotted, time-to-time, throughout Old Portland. On certain nights, a great white celestial stag is spied in the skies over the city.

Other stories are about The Cheerful Tortoise, the only Portland dive to have had a serial killer working there, Randy Woodfield, frightening bathrooms of some clubs as The Jockey, and the stories told in Fugitives and Refugees by a known citizen as Chuck Palahniuk who lived here for more than two decades and still returns periodically to visit old haunts. “North Portland used to be the part of town you didn’t drive through,” he say, “you ran all the stop signs. You couldn’t stop without a drug dealer or prostitute coming to your car.”

About his background, Lucas tells: “When I was younger I wanted to paint and draw but quickly realized I was terrible with my hands so I picked up a camera. I started taking pictures on family roadtrips in the west and continue to use photography as an excuse to travel now“.