Colour

Modern life is losing its colour. Photographer Niall McDiarmid’s work is a joyful antidote against greyscale tones predominant across architecture, interiors, fashion and cars. For over 15 years the photographer has traversed the UK, documenting the inherent colour of life as he finds it.

The photographs in McDiarmid’s new book were shot predominantly in London. His images offer an alternative vision to the monotones of contemporary life: warm, diverse and playful, a vivid celebration of the people and places that still bring colour and individuality to Britain. His subjects' clothing paired with the shades of the urban environment around them, finding harmony where tones echo one another and vitality where they clash. He shows the streets and shopfronts, cafes and pubs, train stations and interiors, finding a richness of colour where others might only see the mundane.

McDiarmid's mastery of colour harmony is at the heart of his practice. He exploits the natural flat light of a typically overcast British day, conditions that soften shadows and allow the colours of clothing, signage, and architecture to fully breathe. The result is a body of work that is at once a document and a celebration: of human individuality and the joyful colour that persists in everyday British life.

“Look at any street these days and you’ll struggle to find a colourful car. Greys, whites and blacks dominate. Office blocks and housing developments are a sea of taupe and beige. Minimalism and modernism have drained the pigment from everyday life. Monochrome has taken over.

So I went in search of full colour. Not just accents of colour here and there, but frames that were full edge to edge, corner to corner of the brightest tones I could find. Street corners, shops, cafes, museums, galleries, anything with the most luminous of shades, I hunted down.

Colour is dynamism and strength and passion. Colour is life.”

Niall McDiarmid (born 1967) is a Scottish photographer based in London whose work is primarily concerned with documenting the people and landscape of Britain. His previous books include Crossing Paths (2013), Via Vauxhall (2015), Town to Town (2018), Southwestern (2019), Shore (2020), and Breakfast (2022). His prints are held in the collections of the Martin Parr Foundation, the Museum of London, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Sir Elton John Photographic Collection. He has had solo exhibitions at Oriel Colwyn in Colwyn Bay, the Museum of London, and the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol.

Hardcover book accompanied by 10x8" Signed print

Oxford Circus, London