Chinese tea · one light, black and white
Condensed caps, a silver signature, a single raking light across a black table. Thirty-four Chinese teas photographed with nothing in the frame that does not need to be there.
3 teas · 3 categories
A single raking light gives an object an edge, and dry tea leaf is nothing but edges, so the light does most of the describing. Removing colour removes the easiest way to tell the categories apart, which forces the difference to be carried by shape and surface: the twist of a red tea, the flat blade of a green, the glassy fracture of a pressed resin. Type is condensed to the point of being a vertical texture, set in caps and spaced wide, so it behaves as a rule under the image rather than as a headline over it. The drawn signature is the only curve in an otherwise straight page and marks the sheet as authored. Black and white also makes the liquor colour, when a cup appears, the single warm event in the frame. Nothing is retouched into softness, because the point of the light is the hard edge.