What remains

Take the colour out of an image and look at what remains. If nothing remains, the photograph does not exist. If a gaze remains, a tension, a light, then you are holding something alive. Black and white is the portrait's test of truth: it forgives neither the empty pose nor the lazy light.

This series is the last one Andrea and I produced together. It is the one I loved creating with her the most. The idea was simple: take away the colour, nothing else. Keep the setting, keep the face, and let the light sculpt what remains. Andrea needed distance to be close. The lens was exactly that: the right distance. In front of it she could give everything, precisely because there was something between us. Me behind, her in front, and the light in between. Perhaps it is there, and only there, that I truly met her. And it needs to be written somewhere: if I hold the camera with more precision today, it is because she was in front of it. You learn this craft with someone. I learned it with her.

In post, I treat my black and whites like film: a grain present but fine, deep blacks that never clog, highlights that breathe. The film look is not a nostalgic filter. It is a way of giving back to the image a texture that digital is too eager to smooth away. Grain is time still clinging to the image.

Black and white is part of every book I build. It is often the image agencies remember, because it is the only one where you cannot cheat.

Looking at these images again today does something to me that I will not try to explain. A chapter ends, the pictures remain. That is exactly what black and white says: take everything away, and what matters is still there. You do not keep these images to hold on to the past. You keep them because they prove it was real.