Black & White

When I got my first 'good' camera, at age 13, I took photos in black and white. For a long time I thought they looked more 'artistic', and besides, I wanted to emulate my favourite photographers: Ansel Adams, Man Ray, Edward Weston, Henri Cartier-Bresson...

These days my photographs are mostly colour. My love for black & white has not gone: the first art instrument that comes to mind is an art pen with black china ink. One summer I made a point of collecting only black and white pebbles.

"The piano keys are black and white but they sound like a million colours in your mind", says a song.

There is also a growing philosophical outlook: these days I feel that love and energy are black & white, in the sense that they are either present or they are not. There is no real middle ground. It says somewhere in the Bible that God likes the hot or the cold and pukes on the lukewarm! I like that: I have come to think that to have integrity you have to be either hot or cold, either black or white, either a 'yes' or a 'no'...