As twilight deepens on winter evenings, the spotlit sculptures provide a luminous backdrop.
Behind them was a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows looking east over Columbus Circle and Central Park, a dramatic and luminous backdrop.
AT the Armani/Ristorante on Fifth Avenue and 56th Street, strands of vertical lights line the floor-to-ceiling windows, creating a luminous backdrop for clusters of elegantly attired customers conversing softly at tables or in intimate circles.
The illustrator, Chris Sickels of the Red Nose Studio in Indiana, ingeniously employs found materials to construct 3-D sculptures, which he then photographs in front of luminous painted backdrops.
Usually a picnic zone, it felt more like an outdoor cinema as night fell over Wimbledon with the luminous roof providing a futuristic backdrop.
To create a unified backdrop, he poured a luminous resin floor in a shade of pale gray he devised with the help of Mr. Kaufman.
The shabby charm of Mexican vernacular buildings, newly decorated with colorful murals or crumbling from years of neglect, is highlighted by pulling them into relief against backdrops of lush fields and luminous skies.
A Richard Avedon portrait of the model Suzy Parker — luminous in a black Dior dress, with an unevenly hung black cloth backdrop behind her — calls attention to the artifice beneath the photographer's carefully glamorous scene.
In the backdrop, fainter and more distant galaxies can be spotted, including some bright ones that are so luminous they even shine through the disk of NGC 1187.
Certainly I had heard snippets of Clara's career told in the traditional way: the glittering career, the superbly histrionic story of her rabid father and haunted husband, the dramatic backdrop of the Dresden uprisings and the growth of pianist-as-cult in the 19th century with luminous show-stoppers such as Liszt and Chopin, warty little Wagner and golden-boy Brahms studding the field.
She loves to pose Roberts against repetitive, bland, pastel-colored surfaces: a locker room, a row of toilet cubicles, the prefab blockish architecture of her school, the aquamarine of a swimming pool (still the backdrop du jour for disaffected youth, along with fish tanks, 40 years after The Graduate), until Roberts' pale, luminous beauty pops.
