The Düsseldorf photographer Lutz Hilgers presents New York as if it was an illuminated stage. Towering buildings, devoid of life, gather before a dark night sky, their abstract forms tracing the unusual perspective of the camera, their contours sharply defined. Yet everything appears remarkably unrealistic. Are we looking at a photograph, a montage, or a digitally created image? Is the ghostly light real? Are the shadows of the buildings the sole witnesses to this scene or are they too part of an elegant, perfectly staged deception? The mixture of realism and abstraction in Lutz Hilger’s