Since I was a child, I’ve had the sense of being an observer, someone who watches from a slightly separate perspective. People, circumstances, occurrences, society, and the whole planet. This didn’t come from not feeling different, of course.

I soon discovered photography and realised it was a practical way of exactly framing the context of what I was seeing. The difficulty comes when one wants to also convey emotion or sub-liminal or symbolic significance to the image. Which is something I strive for, and hope to accomplish on every picture I frame -which not always happens, of course. Clearly, the art of photography comes from being able to freeze the precise moment which conveys the most; being and emotion, an action, a symmetry, a specific tone of light which by the way can be full of significance and can literally transport the observer to its past, a memory or a feeling. This power, the power of light is grandiose and can be full of meaning.

To be honest, I never decided to ‘take b&w photography’; in fact, I orbited towards exclusively using monochrome photography in a very natural way, since the very beginning.

The truth in black & white photography

The world -and life- is duality. Right or wrong, left and right, good and bad, this or that. Perhaps now I realise that using black and white -or the greyscale, to be more precise- is a logical step or way to better describe the reality perceived through our eyes. Don’t get me wrong, the spectrum of light which encompasses our vision is significant although perhaps slightly unnecessary. Let me try to explain myself. Filtering my perception through the greyscale, in a way simplifies the scene and evens-out its appreciation. It simplifies in the way that it reduces its perception towards pure forms, angles, shadows, etc. and yet amplifies details at the same time. This simplification creates, in my point of view, more truth out of the scene.

I believe b&w photography helps me eliminate distractions and focus on what really is there, without filling images with distracting colours which may deviate attention. After all, the perception of color is subjective in many ways.

White is light, darkness is only the absence of light.