“Dad, what if the blue I see is different than the blue you see?” This was the question my ten year old son asked me years ago that started a photographic quest that has led me to this and other portfolios that challenge our perception of color.
When asked why Andy Warhol made the bananas different colors he said ‘because it makes something new”. Electric Downtown takes us somewhere unexpected and new. It questions our basic understanding of color and evokes a new feeling from familiar subject matter. These feelings vary from viewer to viewer.
I have found that because the color is so different in these images people often see shapes, objects and things they had either forgotten about or had never had seen before.
This portfolio was shot in large American cities and is meant to be nondescript. They were photographed in black and white and then digitally manipulated. Some of the cities photographed were Seattle, New York City, Chicago, Rochester and Vancouver BC.
Electric Downtown is one body of work in a collection of portfolios that I am working on that embody a similar exploration of the role of color in our lives.