Quiet studies
in monochrome.
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Mara Voss is a photographer working exclusively in monochrome. For the last fourteen years she has photographed people, places, and the brief moments between — never with a flash, almost never with a tripod, often with only a single roll of film in the bag.
Her work has appeared in Aperture, the New York Times Magazine, and Foam, and is held in the permanent collections of the Stedelijk in Amsterdam, the MEP in Paris, and the Fotomuseum Winterthur. She has exhibited solo at thirteen institutions and one private flat above a bakery in Naples.
This folio collects forty-eight images from the last three years of personal work. The commissioned work, which she keeps deliberately separate, can be requested by email.
The photograph above is the third frame of a six-day shoot inside a private home in Stockholm. The owner had asked for portraits of the family; we found, between the sittings, that the empty rooms had more to say.
Colour is, for most photographers, a kind of cheating. It can make a quiet picture look like a loud one; it can rescue a portrait that wasn't, quite. Monochrome doesn't allow this. Either the geometry is right or it isn't. Either the light has done something, or you have wasted a frame and the evening.
I work this way because I prefer the answer to the question. I prefer it to the question itself, sometimes. Black-and-white is the question already made smaller — the world reduced to the only two truths a camera understands.
The folio you are reading was made entirely on a single Leica M body with a single 35mm lens. I bought both, used, in 2014. I have not changed equipment since. I do not believe equipment is the answer to anything; I believe it is the question we are asking ourselves when we should be asking the picture.
Commissioned work is, of course, different. Commissioned work has clients and deadlines and a colour palette and a moodboard. The studio is happy to take it; it pays for the personal work. But the personal work is the work — and the personal work, for the next decade, will continue to be monochrome.
If you would like the studio to make a photograph of you, of something you own, or of something you would like to remember — you write a letter. A real one, by email is fine. Tell me what the photograph is for and what you would like it to feel like.
I will come and see the room or the person or the object. Just to look. No camera. This is usually a single morning, sometimes an afternoon. We talk; you make coffee; I leave.
Within a week I send you a short proposal — what frames I'm intending, what light I'm waiting for, what it will cost, and how long the studio needs.
A single day, usually. Sometimes two, if the light is uncooperative. I bring one camera, one lens, and three rolls of film. I will not bring an assistant unless the work demands it.
Within three weeks the prints are made — usually a small edition, signed and numbered. The negatives stay with the studio; the files belong to you.
