Notes on Color

I stopped using color in most of my work around 2019. Not as a principle — more as a default that hardened into habit. Black, white, gray. When I need to communicate something that requires color, I use it. Otherwise I don’t.

The reason is practical: I find it easier to think clearly in a restricted palette. Color introduces decisions that are hard to make rationally. Is this blue right? Is it too warm? Should it be more muted? These questions have no correct answers, only defensible ones, and defending them costs time I’d rather spend elsewhere.

The exception

The exception is photography. Or rather, a specific kind of photograph — one where the color is the subject. I’ve been making a small group of images where a single color, in a specific quality of light, is the whole point. These don’t belong to any series yet. I’m not sure they belong together at all.

I’m not trying to make a position out of this. Plenty of work I admire is extravagantly colorful. I just find that color, for me, is mostly noise.