A different way of looking at India

I have always used black-and-white film to photograph India. At first, it was a very natural choice, strongly influenced by some of my photography heroes: Mary Ellen Mark, Cristina García Rodero, Josef Koudelka, Graciela Iturbide, Hiroh Kikai… Photographers whose way of seeing has stayed with me over the years and, in some way, also shaped the way I approached India with a camera.

Throughout this time, I have remained faithful to that decision. Ilford HP5 has been present since the beginning of the project and has been the film I have used to photograph my trips, always pushing it to ISO 1600. I like the way it responds in very different situations, how it handles light and contrast, and how well it suits the way I photograph in the street.

Even so, after several years working exclusively in black and white, I began to feel curious about trying colour film too, as India is a country where colour has a very strong presence, and I wanted to explore other possibilities.

A large part of the reason I finally decided to do it has to do with my friend Adrián, from REVELAB Studio. After several years of insisting that I take colour film to India, he managed to convince me. So, on my most recent trips, I have added several rolls of Kodak Ultramax to my bag, alongside Ilford HP5, to which I remain faithful.

At first, I found it a little difficult to change my mindset. I was very used to thinking about photographs in black and white, and suddenly I had to pay attention to things I had almost ignored before. But little by little, colour began to make sense within my way of looking and photographing.

I do not think this will replace black and white, nor was that ever the intention. I simply wanted to open another door within the project and see what happened. The result is a series of images that, for me, have something different about them, but still belong to the same way of understanding my trips to India.

You can access the gallery here, where I show a small selection of the colour photographs I have taken in India.