When I came to Boston it was a predominantly gray town, with the tint of sooty brick. Months of dirty snow and the cloudy skies of a northeast coastal breeze dampened its traditions, a persistently Puritan atmosphere. It was a black and white town with documentary de rigueur. While photography might yet be considered art, color remained suspect. But if Paul Simon could have his Kodachrome and a Nikon camera, so would I. Yes, those "nice bright colors" – actually much more subtle than that, qualities that the vintage Cibachrome prints I made could only marginally portray. And while the color of Ernst Haas or Pete Turner was appealing, and William Eggleston too, it wasn’t really the color I was seeing. So artistically as exploration of the “new color” began its invasion of the monotone domain, I began collecting street documents with the idea that color might additionally inform the narrative of an image.
See the color paint the light. Today's pigment printers provide new opportunities to closer follow this timeless edict of Provincetown plein air painters. Ten inks to reach the color depth of the Kodachrome palette, scans record to the limit of film grain, seemingly limitless computer control, and archival art papers bring me back to these images. I've chosen a Platine fiber paper with a surface like that of the classic modern for this series. A clean luminance with expressive neutrals, richly warm pastels, truth in earth tones, bright reds, varietal greens, shaping blues contribute to become the colors of memory.
Boston Color |