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Photography series · Portrait

Grain and Grey

For
Personal project
Location
Barcelona, Spain
Scope
Photography · Prints
Published
Black and white portrait of a woman lying with her eyes closed

A studio sitting on film, one roll, twelve frames. Hard light from a single window, a borrowed camera in her hands and the discipline of not moving for a slow shutter.

Archive black and white photograph of a brass band
A print from the market that started the series: a band, 1911, everyone still. Photograph by Museums Victoria.
Silhouette of a fisherman casting a line into morning mist, in black and white
The lake, the fisherman, the same rule: one figure, one light. Photograph by Collins Illich.

Twelve frames

Medium format makes you count. Every frame is a decision, and the decisions show. The grain is the film, not a filter; the grey is the wall of the studio, which is white in colour and grey in every photograph I have ever made there.

She closed her eyes on the seventh frame because the light was in them. I kept it. The eyes open are a portrait of her; the eyes closed are a portrait of the light.

Colour tells you what things are. Black and white tells you what they weigh.

Black and white image of an acrobat suspended upside down
From the same month, the same film: the acrobat, upside down, in the same grey. Photograph by Mateus Duraes dos Santos.

The print

Printed on fibre paper at 30 by 30, with the border of the negative left in. The camera was her grandfather's; the print now hangs in the room where he kept it.

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