Forbidden Light is a journey of discovery through Wissahickon Valley Park in Philadelphia. Winding through the trails and meadows surrounding Wissahickon Creek and Forbidden Drive, a stretch of road so named because it has been closed to motor vehicle traffic for well over 100 years, there is an opportunity for communion with nature that is rare throughout much of the city.
All of the photographs in this collection were made on frozen stock of a discontinued high speed 35mm infrared film, with the use of a rangefinder camera and a nearly opaque infrared filter. The photographs are a record of light beyond the spectrum visible to the human eye, resulting in an ethereal glow around sun-struck foliage as well as inky black skies and dark water.
Infrared photography invites us to consider the latent beauty around us constantly that cannot be seen, looking beyond the everyday of what is, to the possibility of what can be. Forbidden Light is a reflection on the importance of access to recreational natural spaces and the immeasurable value to be gained by creating safe infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists through effective urban planning.
Dale McCarthy is a Philadelphia-based photographer whose practice engages the material and temporal qualities of analog photography. Working with 35mm and medium-format film, McCarthy maintains a fully hands-on process, developing all film personally and producing the majority of his prints in a home darkroom. This commitment to traditional photographic methods situates his work within a lineage of process-driven image making while allowing space for experimentation and perceptual shift.
McCarthy is a color darkroom instructor at Fleisher Art Memorial and a member of the Halide Project, where pedagogy, collaboration, and craft intersect. His photographs have been presented in numerous group exhibitions and published in Incandescent, mutiny!, Float Photo Magazine, and the Winter 2026 issue of The Hand.
In addition to his exhibition practice, McCarthy frequently collaborates with artists, writers, and musicians, producing portraiture for press materials and album artwork that emphasizes presence and context. Forbidden Light: Infrared Photographs of the Wissahickon is his first solo exhibition, presenting an alternative visual reading of a familiar landscape through infrared photography, where the boundaries between the seen and unseen are subtly reconfigured.
