Photo of the month Insta: January 2020

Efe Çaylak

Maria Kappatou

Understanding colour

When reading about theory of colour we may come across conclusions such as “the impact of Yellow versus Blue is proportional to the lightness and saturation of the hues”.

Very enlightening, especially if we consider that all sensorial  pleasures have been studied and explained in depth, even expressed in mathematic formulae.

That is why every time I am merrily walking through the park or driving through the city (to do my windshield photography) I am thinking intensively w=mg and a=vt.

The above was my weekend joke, since looking at the two preferred pictures of the curators of BULB IG for this first month of the year, we can easily understand why these 2 have been selected, or can we?

Well first of all we understand that we have to respect the aesthetic instinct of the viewer which is the only parameter in any attempted “theory” of curating.

Secondly we have to admit that colour will always be a powerful tool to create entry points or points of interest, in other words it is the perfect gaze-ambush.

But colour cannot create the mojo in street photography, it cannot raise questions to the observer, it cannot build stories, it cannot weave dramas or narrate tragedies.

Instead, the silhouette hesitating in entering the light in Maria’s picture can; the frontal look behind the glass of a half-scared, half-curious man, in Efe’s picture (photo of the month), can! As can the background figures burning but not escaping, real but immaterial at the same time.

You are now trapped by colours, so lay back and enjoy the narration.     

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Photo of the month (by Efe Çaylak) and runner-up (by Maria Kappatou) January 2010, Instagram account of BULB (curated by Marius Petrescu, Panagiotis Kalkavouras and the undersigned Michail).