One of the questions I am asked again and again is this: why black and white?

The simple answer would be: because I like it.

The honest answer is more complex.

For me, black and white is not a stylistic choice in any superficial sense, nor is it a nostalgic gesture toward past photographic eras. It is a deliberate act of reduction, perhaps even a form of concentration. Colour tells its story immediately. It situates an image in a time, a temperature, an atmosphere, sometimes even within a specific cultural expectation. A red dress, a blue sky, the warmth of skin tones, the green of an interior — all of this speaks directly to the viewer. That is often its strength. And at times, also its problem.

What frequently interests me is not the surface of the subject, but what lies beneath it: light, form, tension, body, space, and archetypal layers. Colour can open an additional field of meaning, but it can also distract. It is often too concrete. Black and white removes much of that specificity. It reduces. It compels the eye to attend to lines, planes, transitions, and shadows — to those zones where the image no longer merely narrates, but begins to exert its force. In my work especially, light is never merely a means to an end; it is often the true protagonist. It shapes, devours, reveals, and creates tension. In black and white, this sculptural quality becomes far more pronounced.

What matters particularly to me is this: for me, there is no single black and white. There are many forms of black and white, and within that multiplicity lies an essential part of the photographic process.

The black and white that moved me so deeply in the work of František Drtikol is fundamentally different from that of classic Hollywood photography of the 1920s and 1930s. In Drtikol’s images, there are often no absolute endpoints. The black is rarely fully sealed, rarely an absolute abyss. The black point is slightly lifted, so that within the depths there remains a trace of detail, a residue of space, a suggestion of matter. Likewise, the whites are seldom entirely pure or blown out; they are slightly restrained, so that they never become brutally absolute. What emerges is an almost breathing tonal field between light and darkness.

It is precisely this subtle openness at the extremes that fascinates me. It is a black and white that does not shout, but resonates.

Set against this is the black and white of classic Hollywood portraiture, in the spirit of George Hurrell, which embraces more dramatic contrasts. Here, edges of light may cut more sharply, highlights sculpt the face more decisively, and shadows reach deeper. Light becomes a stage, an act of mise-en-scène, almost the dramaturgy of the face itself.

And then there is the black and white of Sebastião Salgado, which functions in an entirely different way again through its tonal depth, material presence, and grain structure. There, the image lives through an immense gravity, through finely modulated midtones and a physical presence that feels almost sculptural.

This is precisely why black and white is never, for me, a mere click.

It is not that quick filter the Instagram-trained eye may be accustomed to, where a colour image is “converted to black and white” in a matter of seconds. For me, the real work often begins only after that point. The definition of black and white emerges through many precise stages: the control of individual colour channels, deliberate tonal shifts, work with curves, the calibration of black and white points, the fine shaping of midtones, local contrast control, dodge and burn, grain structure, microcontrast, vignetting, and the conscious orchestration of how light moves within the pictorial space.

Only then does the actual black and white image come into being.

Not as a technical condition, but as a decision of visual language.

An image may thus become soft and almost velvety, dramatic and cinematic, sculptural and severe, or nearly graphically reduced. For me, black and white is therefore not the absence of colour. It is a visual language in its own right.

At the same time, it is important to dispel a possible misunderstanding.

My decision to work in black and white does not mean that colour photography feels foreign to me, let alone repellent. Quite the opposite. Recently, I have been engaging with colour very intensively — though less through classical photography than by way of film. At the moment, I am researching cinematic image worlds very specifically, paying close attention to directors and cinematographers who work with atmosphere, light, and colour grading in a highly deliberate manner.

In recent months, this has led to several fascinating discoveries.

One of them was an almost paradoxical red — a red that did not feel warm, sensual, or aggressive, but instead created an atmosphere that was strangely cold and distant. The entire scene was immersed in this tone, and precisely that irritation has stayed with me. A cold red — a contradiction, and precisely for that reason, an image language of enormous interest.

I have spent a long time experimenting in order to understand this effect and make it photographically tangible for myself.

Experiments like these remind me that colour possesses a language just as complex and autonomous as black and white.

Perhaps even more so.

Who knows — perhaps one day there will be, alongside Artis Umbrae, another artistic universe. A space in which colour is not merely decorative, but becomes the true carrier of atmosphere, emotion, and meaning.

A possible name for it might be Ars Lucis — the art of light, a counterpoint to the realm of shadows.

For now, however, I am still some distance away from that.

At present, I am not yet at the point where these chromatic approaches can be shaped into an independent artistic line. Such a visual language demands the same rigour, the same density, and the same inner coherence that sustains Artis Umbrae today.

To condense colour into style, to forge it into an unmistakable signature — if it happens at all — will most likely take years.

And perhaps that is exactly as it should be.

Not every idea must become a series immediately.

Some need to mature.

Some remain fragments.

And some may grow, over years, into a second artistic cosmos.

If it ever comes to that.