Stairway to Hell
This photograph emerged from a fascination with how architecture shifts once stripped of its context. What the lens captured here is, in essence, a flight of stairs. Yet under the harsh saturation of artificial red light and the obliteration of all surrounding detail into deep black, it becomes a surreal passage, one that feels less like a functional structure and more like an allegorical descent—or ascent, depending on how one reads it. The title, of course, plays on that ambiguity.
From a compositional standpoint, the image relies heavily on abstraction. The staircase cuts diagonally across the frame, its curve creating a dynamic tension with the void beside it. Negative space does most of the work here, carving out an almost sculptural contrast. Without any human presence, the scale collapses into uncertainty: it could be monumental or miniature, industrial or theatrical. That indeterminacy strengthens its graphic power.
Technically, exposure was critical. Shooting against near-black, I risked either losing the red’s tonal richness or allowing digital noise to creep in. The balance lies in underexposing just enough to deepen the blacks while preserving the gradations within the red plane. On closer inspection, you can see subtle horizontal striations, reminders of the staircase’s material reality. These stop the photograph from tipping into pure abstraction.
The saturation itself carries weight. Red is easily overdone, slipping into cliché or eye-strain, but in this case the light was already intense. I chose not to temper it in post-production, allowing the rawness to speak. The result edges towards the dramatic, but without veering into kitsch, precisely because the composition is stripped back to essentials: curve, colour, contrast.
What remains is a photograph that asks the viewer to navigate between architecture and metaphor. Is this a simple staircase lit at night, or is it a visual portal to something more unsettling? As with most images that lean into minimalism, the answer is left open
