Narrative
Asia
8
5

I often get asked why I don’t photograph in black and white, as though it’s a more prestigious or respected form, colour by inference more common or prosaic. In the digital age, with no processing costs or limits on treatment, black and white at best now seems a restriction, a denial of the ocular carnival of life; at worst a mere artifice, a vanity, and a way at times to give average images an air. In many ways Thailand is the geographic manifestation of that dichotomy. Turn up your nose at this visual feast at your own peril.

I often get asked why I don’t photograph in black and white, as though it’s a more prestigious or respected form, colour by inference more common or prosaic. In the digital age, with no processing costs or limits on treatment, black and white at best now seems a restriction, a denial of the ocular carnival of life; at worst a mere artifice, a vanity, and a way at times to give average images an air. In many ways Thailand is the geographic manifestation of that dichotomy. Turn up your nose at this visual feast at your own peril.

Thailand

There is no end to the opulence of its palette; no way not to want to soak my camera in its technicolour foams and streams; and no part of me that wants to pretend not to adore the endless train of etherial souvenirs it produces.
The shining rainbows of dresses, parasols and silks. The painted patterns of carved boxes, wooden statues, and porcelain figurines. The smoky concoctions of countless temples. The lush greens and blues of its jungles and forests, spotted with the oily pigments of tropical orchids and blooms. It sometimes seems like Thailand was the place that colour was first invented.
 
 
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ANTHONY ELLIS