Questioning why I crop to square and convert to black and white led me to experiment with revealing the process. The images here sit on the fence. The colour fills in the blanks. There is a feeling of past and present. The monochrome portion, being square, is a format of the past, a portal.
The absence of people in the images make them harder to date – the neon sign ‘vapes’ becomes a dead giveaway. This leads to the final three images where people are introduced into the colour portion of the shot. Outsiders otherwise lost to the crop.
Whether or not the monochrome image is strengthened, the combination raises questions. Is it now withholding the truth? Considering that we see in colour, does monochrome become a lie? All photographs are a minute crop of time and place. Revealing the remainder of the image is a reminder of this.
BenKing 