Foliage, Monochrome

The same leaves as before — the same tropical fig, the same upright shoot, the same two round fruits at the base — but the colour is gone. What remains is light.

Without the green, the leaves become something else. Their surfaces turn to dark silver, and every vein stands out like the grain of old wood. The new shoot at the centre, which in colour was only a paler green, becomes the brightest line in the picture. The fruits, almost hidden before, now show every rough point of their skin.

It is strange how much we see when something is taken away. A familiar face in a quiet moment, without the talk and colour of the day around it. A house after the furniture has gone, when for the first time you notice the shape of the rooms.

To photograph the same plant twice, once in colour and once in black and white, is to ask what a thing is when it no longer has to be pretty.

Perhaps what remains, when the colour is gone, is what was holding it together all along.