Black is the color of my hair when it’s wet. It’s the color of my car’s steering wheel, which gets intensely hot in the sun. Black is also the color of most of my clothes, and sometimes the color of the music I listen to. It’s the name of a girl who sings annoying songs about weekdays, and the color of the sky on cold winter nights. It’s the color of my computer, of the remote control and the TV. The cover of my copy of the
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is black, as is the cover of the dreadfully boring
Environmental Law and Justice in Context that I should be reading instead of silly space adventures. Black absorbs all frequencies of light in the visible spectrum, and it’s the color of sorrow. That didn’t stop the Rolling Stones from painting it black, though, and it certainly didn’t stop the Man in Black from being awesome. Black is not the color of the rainbow, but sometimes it’s the color of my mood when I’m trying to figure out what to photograph for a certain theme, like Black, for example.
But most importantly, black is the color of my favorite kind of candy; ammonium chloride, the Finnish way. Salmiakki is black as the night, saltier than the Dead Sea and a candy only the most daring of connoisseurs would put in their mouth. I could live only on salmiakki, but I’m Finnish, it’s in my DNA. I’ve tried offering it to Americans, but they spit it out and thought I was joking when I told them it’s edible. If any of you feel like you’re up for the challenge of tasting it though, I’ll be happy to send you some.
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Thirty Days of Photographs: Black
