Not A Photography Anymore

I approached this shot with the intention of exploring the point at which photography begins to lose its documentary role and drifts into the territory of constructed image-making. The Leica M9, with its CCD sensor, is unforgiving in its rendering of highlights, and here I chose to exploit that to push the tones far beyond their natural state. The result is an image that wears its artificiality openly.

The composition is rigidly symmetrical: three vases, evenly spaced, under a line of metallic coffee pots and creamers. The symmetry is disrupted only by the interplay of colours — magenta, amber, and white — and the bold shadows they cast. These shadows are not passive; they form abstract shapes that compete with the objects themselves for the viewer’s attention.

Technically, the image is deliberately over-processed, the colour saturation driven hard enough to break the smooth gradations and create a hyperreal texture. It’s a decision that removes any pretense of subtlety but amplifies the graphic qualities of the subject. The reflections on the glass shelves and the controlled fall-off of light frame the objects within an almost stage-like setting.

This is not a photograph that seeks to hide the hand of the photographer. It announces itself as an intervention — a manipulation of light, colour, and tone that transforms the straightforward into something self-consciously constructed. In that sense, it stops being about recording what was in front of the lens and becomes about creating what could only exist within it.