Why Every Photo On This Page Is Black and White

People love to say life isn't black and white. That everything has nuance. That the truth lives in the shades of grey between two extremes. Ansel Adams, one of the greatest photographers who ever lived, said almost exactly that: it's the grey that gives the black and white their meaning.

We disagree, and we shoot every photo on this page to say so.

Life is black and white. It's good, or it's not. It's working, or it's not. He's right for you, or he's not. The job is worth your Tuesdays, or it's draining them. You are being honest with yourself, or you're managing a story. There is no third option where you get to keep the comfort of "it's complicated" forever. At some point complicated is just a word for a decision you've already made and haven't acted on yet.

That's why we don't shoot in color. Color lets you hide inside the atmosphere of a scene, the warm light, the soft background, the mood that makes a moment feel more resolved than it is. Strip the color out and there's nowhere left to hide. What's left is just the face, the posture, the decision. Black and white doesn't let a photo, or a sentence, or a woman, get away with being vague.

Most of what people call "nuance" in their own lives is a woman avoiding a call she's already made in her gut. She knows the relationship isn't it. She knows the job is costing her more than it pays. She knows the friend group has turned into an obligation. The grey area isn't confusion, it's a stall tactic, and it's an expensive one, because every year spent in the grey is a year not spent building the thing that's actually good.

None of this means life is simple. Deciding whether something is good or not can take real work, real honesty, real time sitting with a hard question. But the decision itself, once you've done that work, is not complicated. It's binary. It's good, or it's not. Deal with it, and then move.

That's the frame this whole site is shot through, literally and otherwise. If a post here reads as blunt, that's the point. We'd rather hand you clarity than company in the grey.