The photos I took and posted are in so-called ‘black-and-white’ but they are never actually ‘black’ and actually ‘white’. The term ‘black-and-white’ is, to be more technical, grey monochrome. Monochrome means ‘having one colour’ and it can be any colour but there can only be just one. Greyscale, however, is how I want my photos to allegorically represent reality.
Almost everything in the world is never truly “black and white”. There is always something in between. And greyscale is a better description to what the world, as we know, is. The only thing I can think of that is truly black-and-white is text printed on paper. And even that can be debated to be not exactly true.
And beyond what we see, our morals and values aren't black-and-white. Philosophy isn't black-and-white. Religion isn't black-and-white. Sexuality isn't black-and-white. Even our understanding of the world is not black-and-white. So why should we believe that there is black-and-white in our lives? We don't live in a binary, dichotomous world. There are a lot of ‘grey’ areas in what we see, believe, hear, understand, and learn.
Therefore, as I document the lives I encounter on the streets, I present/process them in grey monochrome while keeping the authenticity of the moment intact. It is to tell the viewer: hey, the world is grey and everything is complicated. Simplicity is a lie and embrace reality as it is complex. Nothing in the universe is ever simple, not even single-celled organisms.
It is not that I don't have the knowledge/know-how to process photos in colour. You might even think “this is the simplest way to process photos, it's just lazy". What I want is to focus on the greyscale — that reality is grey and never as simple as ‘black-and-white’. So that anyone who views them will not reduce reality and water it down to simpler terms and forms.