During the weekend, I visited the Revelat festival. There I saw “Movimiento Continuo”, the work of Juan Manuel Díaz Burgos on Cuba. His project documents more than 32 years of ingenious life in Cuba, “a country where creativity and resilience are essential for survival”.

While walking the room, enjoying the photographs, at one point my brain goes, “Where is the color?! Cuba is color”.

And I stop a second to reflect.

Honestly, the photos were outstanding, but some could have been made everywhere. I felt that stripping away color was like stripping away a part of Cuba’s soul.

I’ve just finished the book “A Question of Color” by Joel Meyerowitz, so I might be impartial. Joel Meyerowitz writes, “If description is really what photography is about, then a black-and-white photograph doesn’t describe everything that’s there, because it’s taken away all of the color. It’s giving the graphic bones of the image but none of the flesh”. Color gives information about the atmosphere, the moment of the day, and so on. To him, color is life.

And I totally agree with him.

On the other hand, I think of Henri Cartier-Bresson. Henri Cartier-Bresson was known to be a cutter of the black-and-white photography, seeing color as a distraction from what he wanted to capture and negating the full expression of the moment. Overall, black-and-white photography is seen as the best way to express emotions, volumes, and shapes while creating a more calm atmosphere that allows space for interpretation and introspection.

If, on one side, black-and-white freezes the decisive moment and the emotions in it, color expresses the whole richness of life as it is and, sometimes, could be a distinctive trait of a place. Like for Vietnam, like for Cuba.

Back to the exhibition, I understand and respect the photographer’s intention to focus on the emotional aspect of resilience in Cubans’ daily life and, at the same time, I missed the richness of color that pervaded my senses when I visited the island more than a decade ago.

As with everything, there is no right or wrong; it’s a matter of how someone sees the world and the intention behind the photographs. I definitely see it in color, but that doesn’t mean I would ever photograph in black and white.

What about you? Are you drawn more by color or black-and-white photography?