The Presence of Memory
Why black and white portraits still matter.
“Black and white is not the absence of color, but the presence of memory.”
I don’t remember where I first heard that. Maybe I thought it myself, in the quiet after a shoot. In New York, the shadows always seemed to tell their own stories.
I’ve made thousands of photographs over the years, most in color. Clients love vibrancy, warm light, lively tones. But from every shoot, I secretly keep one black and white portrait just for myself. It’s usually a quiet frame—the one that wouldn’t stand out in a bright, curated gallery. But to me, that’s the soul of it.
They are time folded gently into paper.
They sit together in a folder on my desktop, like a secret diary.
They remind me: not everything we keep is meant to be seen.
