Found Monochromes

I was delighted to see monochromes proliferating in the Seoul subway system recently. This is largely thanks to the pandemic, which has reduced traffic on the subway and therefore made it much less attractive to advertisers.

What they do here, as elsewhere, is turn an old advertisement around and upside down rather than remove it until a new one takes its place. So, actually, these are not pure monochromes, because very faintly one can see the image and text of the reversed advertisement. This is also very appealing to me, as I’m particularly fascinated by low contrast, ‘in-betweenness’ in perception. So another plus - at least for me - of the pandemic.

In my new book about the monochrome in art, The Simple Truth’ (Reaktion Books) I mention the ‘found monochromes’ of the British artist David Batchelor, who goes around photographing more strictly monochrome surfaces, usually white, where he comes across them. Here are a couple of examples: