Light,
reduced to its bones
Black & white photographs · The Netherlands
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Black & white photographs · The Netherlands
“Take away the colour, and what remains is shape, texture and the way the light falls. That is what I look for.”
Boris · Borizzzo
Colour tells you what something is. Black and white tells you how it is made. When the red of a petal or the blue of the sky disappears, the eye starts looking for other things: the line of a fender, the grain of old wood, the way the light slides over a curve.
I did not start out wanting to photograph in monochrome. It happened slowly, while sorting thousands of pictures and noticing that the ones I kept coming back to were the ones where colour did not matter.
The photographs here were made in the Netherlands between 2024 and 2026, with a Sony, a Nikon Z6 and, on long walks, a phone. Nothing is staged except the still lifes, and nothing is more than an afternoon's walk from home.
My name is Boris. I grew up in Kharkiv, Ukraine, where I studied history and archaeology, and later the history of theatre. For a while I worked as assistant to the director Andriy Zholdak, and that is where I learned that a scene is mostly a question of light: where it comes from, what it reveals, what it leaves in the dark.
Since moving to the Netherlands I photograph in my free time, on weekends and on long summer evenings. These pictures are not commissioned. They are simply the things I stopped for.
Studied history and theatre. Worked as assistant to director Andriy Zholdak and learned to see a scene as light on a stage.
A new country and new streets. The camera came along and stayed.
The first years: classic cars, steel, winter fields of Limburg.
Closer and quieter: still lifes, feathers, water and long summer shadows.
Sony for the early years. Later a Nikon Z6, often with a macro lens.
Shot in colour, converted to black & white, contrast set by eye. No added elements, nothing removed.
For questions, prints or just to say hello: borizzzofoto@gmail.com · Instagram @borizzzo