True Colors (Five)
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Recall that this series of "True Color" posts is my attempt to devine color's function in photography, or at least its function as I see it. Today's post continues to discuss how color can sometimes define a picture's subject and other ways it can function as part of the image or message. There is no reason to think color has only one function or that its function is the same in every image.
Here the colors are almost congruent with the subject, paint sticks in a famous Paris shop (Magasin Sennelier).
The analogous flowers seem (to me) far more defined by their colors than by their petal shapes.
And here, the scene - indeed, the building - would probably not even exist without color; colored neon made Las Vegas possible.
In the following four images, color's function varies from editorial (the exuberant, lively colors in the first, "Chinatown Mural, San Francisco 2017," contrast with the figure's colorless clothes and life prospects),
to ironic (in the second, "installation Pompidou, Paris 2014," where the fire equipment installation seems as much on display as any of the art in the Centre Pompidou),
to amusing (in the third, "Acqua Alta Fashions, Venice 2014," of colorful shoe coverings supplied by these visitors' tour company),
to irrelevant (in the fourth, "Gondola Bows, Venice 2014," where the water could have been any color).
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After a lifetime of mainly expressing myself with words, my postings here will mainly rely on images. They will speak for themselves to some extent, but I'll usually add a few comments of explanation. I've taken photographs for decades, since the 1950's, inspired in part by my father's photographic skill. Four years of photo assignments and quality darkroom time eventually gave way to decades of casual and family picture-taking. I re-immersed myself when I left film and turned to digital.