Color can sometimes be a distraction. As a journalist on the street, the vibrancy of a red or the allure of a blue can easily overshadow the core of the story. But when you strip away the color, only three things remain: light, shadow, and emotion.
The Honesty of Grey
For me, black and white photography is the purest form of "writing with light"—a concept I deeply explored during my cinema studies in Montreal. While colors tell us the hour of the day or the season of the year, black and white tells us how the moment felt. The dust motes in a quilt-maker’s workshop or the deep-set lines on Ferdi’s face find their truest voice in shades of grey.
The Texture of Analog (Grain)
The smoothness of digital can often feel sterile and soulless. In contrast, the grainy structure of 35mm black and white film—born from silver nitrate—gives the photograph a "skin." This texture reinforces the honesty of documentation; with all its flaws and roughness, it is the truth itself.
The invisible weight
“When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in black and white, you photograph their souls!”