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B+W

MARK BENTLEY You’ve been taking pictures for many years,

but it’s only recently that you’ve been working in black & white.

BRUCE PERCY For a long time I really struggled with black & white

because I think it’s a lot harder to do well than colour is. I think a

lot of beginners push up the contrast and they think it looks really

exciting, but you learn as you go along that that kind of image is

quite hard to look at for more than a couple of minutes. It becomes

quite fatiguing, everything is shouting at you. A really good image

doesn’t get tiresome to look at because there’s much more subtlety

to it. The person who crafted it is doing it in such a way that they

are pulling your eye around.

MB Some of your most interesting B&W work was taken on the

Isle of Harris in Scotland. What’s so special about the area?

BP I’ve been thinking for a long time that people don’t know what

their style is and they don’t know how they are evolving. But if you

are lucky in your development as an artist you might just come

across a certain landscape at the right time that helps you push

in the right direction.

So I went to Bolivia in 2009 and there was almost nothing there.

It got me thinking more about colour, simple shapes and abstracts

because you’re not really looking at mountains and trees and sea

and iconic locations, you’re just thinking about shapes and patterns.

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