HARMAN Red: A Slightly Alien Amsterdam
A work trip, a few strangers and a roll that turned the city into somewhere else.
I bought HARMAN Red to experiment. During some free time in Amsterdam, I walked with my Zenza Bronica ETRS and a 75mm lens, photographing whatever caught my attention. No particular plan, just curiosity about how the city would look in red.
My first reaction to the scans was: “What the hell is this?”
From purple to red to orange, the colours shifted much more than I expected. With black and white, I have a sense of continuity across a roll. Here, I couldn’t always work out what had caused the change.
A QUESTION AND A CIGARETTE
I stopped a few people along the way.
Three guys were having a cigarette when I asked, “Can I ask you something?”
“Depends on the question.”
I showed them my camera from the ’80s and asked if I could make a portrait on film. They agreed. There’s something unforced about their pose that I love. The photograph feels like it could be a vinyl sleeve, found years later in somebody’s collection.
Another man was leaving his house. He told me he preached about God and boxed. I asked him for a couple of photographs, too.
LET THE COLOURS HAPPEN
I shot the medium-format roll at 125 ASA. Sometimes I looked for strong light and reflections, just to see what would come back.
I changed very little in the scans. Compared with my T‑MAX TIFFs, which feel almost like working with RAW files, these gave me much less room to adjust before the image started falling apart. I preferred to keep close to what came back from the lab.
WOULD I SHOOT IT AGAIN?
Yes, especially for architecture and landscapes. Now I have a little more understanding of what to expect, although the shifts still make me hesitate. Small changes in the scene seem to produce very different results.
But I wanted to see Amsterdam looking a little alien. That’s exactly what I brought home.
Scanned at Speed Photo Bovisa, Milan.
