Ken Taylor

Between Black & White

September 2017 - January 2018, at Petitou Cafe, Peckham.

This wallet of postcards is a fourth collection of photographs, marking what is becoming a yearly ritual. As a counterpoint to the colour of the “Twin Trilogy” series 2014-2016 and the devisive fall out from the binary choice presented by the EU referendum of 2016, it seemed interesting to investigate colour photos that were ostensibly black and white. In making a preliminary selection and listening to the great bass clarinetist & saxophonist Bennie Maupin’s Penumbra* Cd of 2006, the beauty “between” black and white became the theme and title for the show.

The pictures chosen meditate on a weathered urban world, devoid of direct corporate control, hovering between the recognisable, and something more illusive in their layered complexity. While this, coupled with the black and whiteness can be seen as a lament for a lost communication, the language of photographs is inevitably “light”, the perennial mediator that brings growth, conversations and hope into being. This brought to mind Octavio Paz’s poem “The Bridge”. Here the collaborative complexity to build bridges is used metaphorically to reflect back on making connections, rather than walls of separation. Hopefully the postcards will be sent into the world with affection and some quiet rainbows may appear. 

*(Oxford Dictionary definition; Penumbra) 1. The partially shaded outer region of the shadow cast by an opaque object. 2. A peripheral or indeterminate area or group.

Ken Taylor is 5 minutes younger than his twin sister. He is an Architect who takes a lot of photographs and lives in Peckham.

This publication is dedicated to Rosemary Connor Taylor (1933-2016) who had an eye for colour and the nuances Between Black and White.