The world is truly a different place at night; submerged into stillness and shadow, familiar places become as otherworldly as the bottom of the ocean. Elsa Bleda is a photographer and visionary who captures the haunting power of this nightly transformation. A focus of her work is her home, the city of Johannesburg. “There are many realities,” Bleda writes in an epigraph to the series featured here, titled “Nottingham Road,” wherein rain-wet roads and fog-shrouded trees meld with the eerie, mercury-and-neon glow of urban lights. The cinematic quality of work is a fitting tribute to the underappreciated beauty and strangeness of night. “Shooting late at night somewhere like [Johannesburg] is like being between a dream state and wakefulness,” she said in an interview with The Drum. “I feel like I step into an alternate reality. It also makes me feel powerful in a way.” Visit Bleda’s Behance for more astounding images of her waking-life dreamworlds.

Images © Elsa Bleda