Notes from the darkroom.

#13: on color

I started in color, because that’s what you do.

That’s the default: a camera, a scene, the world as it is.

Then I learnt black and white and couldn’t go back.

In my photojournalism years, the only time I used color was when an editor required it. When I left that line of work behind, I left color with it.

And when I eventually picked up a camera again, I went straight back to black and white without thinking.

Digital existed by then and it would’ve been easy to switch from one to the other at will, but it didn’t change anything. My instincts were already shaped: strip the world down to light and form.

New York broke that pattern.
New Year’s Eve. The spectacle of everything at once.

You can photograph the city in black and white, of course, but I couldn’t. Not then.

New York lives through its colors and I wanted the images to breathe that same atmosphere. It wasn’t a creative decision; it was the only way the place made sense to me.

Then came the years of wildlife and landscapes —and you don’t turn wildlife into black and white unless color has nothing left to offer. And in nature, color always has something left.

The subjects carried such intense emotion that I never wanted to reduce them to something smaller than what they were.

A polar bear running in a white landscape with a streak of red blood on his fur; a toucan's orange beak glowing in the half-dark of the rainforest; a line of lava cutting through a fern forest like a blade… These scenes didn't require interpretation. They were powerful as they were.

And somewhere in that process, I stopped resisting. Color became part of how I see. Not an accessory, not a concession to reality. Just another form of attention. The images started to carry a signature of their own.

Then I returned to film. Returned to the darkroom. Returned to photographing the non-sensational.

And with that came the unavoidable question: What is color for, now? Is it information? A technicality? A creative impulse? A habit I picked up in the field?

I’d learnt color as something to render faithfully, as close as possible to what I saw. So it wasn’t about effect. I wasn’t shaping it or bending it.

I think it was something simpler: the colors touched me. They were part of the emotion of the moment, and removing them felt dishonest. Once I understood that, the question disappeared.

Florida made it clear.

I arrived with two cameras: one loaded in black and white, the other in color. Naturally.

And without planning anything, I photographed more in color than anything else.

Was it the place?
The lack of practice?
A reluctance to chase the non-obvious?
The fact that in Florida, color is the subject?
Or simply that I wasn’t interested in balance anymore?

It doesn’t matter.
I’m done overthinking it.

I want to photograph as I feel, let the instant decide what the image needs.

Color isn’t a stance or an argument. It’s just another shade on the palette, another way of responding to the world.

I’ll always love black and white a little more.
And I won’t apologise for loving color too.