Night can mean many things. It can embody complete silence or universality, a sense of the cosmic. It can also frame the less reputable side of urban life and its darker amusements, as in film noir. In Ralf Peters’s new series of photographs, “Open Studies,” 1998, night creates a gloomy, menacing atmosphere and provides the precondition for an imposing use of light. Peters’s noir photographs seduce with a brilliance and luminosity known only in night photography.

“Open Studies” comprises various shots of commercial buildings, people working on computers in their apartments, and New York street