A Transient Rumination

Without a doubt, color is important-but for me the question has always been how much color needs to be in a photograph to make the image more evocative? Does it need to yell at the rafters that IT has arrived? Or can it be the smallest whisper, tickling that quiet place in the back of your mind? For me, color has never been about bold graphic statements or striking color fields, it’s been much more emotionally potent for me if color was used as a quiet wash throughout the image, a mellowing ingredient rather than an amplifying one. Much of my work has been described as black and white, because the color palettes are sometimes so subtle as to be misinterpreted as simply toned gelatin silver. Indeed some of my work is simply toned, but for me the quietness of a muted palette is surpassed by nothing at all-it is the best of both worlds. I don’t need color to fight for dominance in my own work because my work is not about color, it is about something intangible and introspective-therefore to me, color provides a connection to a certain mental state that the graphic and narrative qualities in my work support. Nothing more, nothing less.