After Gruyaert
2026 started quiet.
I wrote on the 5th of January that 2025 had been a roller coaster, but Infinara had slowly started becoming Infinara. Curation got better. It stopped being a place to dump photos. My style settled. The postcard project at the end of last year closed things off well.
I came into 2026 with a list. Umbrellas of Malé. Recreating art pieces. Recreating movie scenes. A photo slide viewer project. But I also told myself not to force anything. Just keep documenting the city. Let the projects come when they come.
Around that same time, I wrote this down:
"If you study too many voices at once, yours will blur. You already have a voice. Those artists are not teachers. They are mirrors."
The list of voices was long. Saul Leiter, Ernst Haas, Harry Gruyaert, Luigi Ghirri, Vivian Maier, Raghubir Singh, Edward Hopper, Wong Kar-Wai, Mahmoud Darwish. I wasn't trying to become any of them. I just wanted to see what they saw reflected back in me.
The first project of the year happened on its own.
Every photo I took, I paired it with a short video clip of the same scene. Jazz underneath. It was a way of showing people what I actually saw when I took the photo. Because most of the time I don't see the world as photos. I see it as movies. Every still object, every moving object. It unfolds in scenes. I think that skill is part of what helps me capture things the way I do.
I ended that project around 15 posts in. Before it could burn me out. Felt like the right place to stop.
Sometime in March I watched a T. Hopper video on how Harry Gruyaert turns chaos into cinematic street photography. I took a lot of notes.
A few things stuck.
Most street photographers treat chaos as the enemy. Too many people, too many signs, too many colors in one frame. Gruyaert walks straight into it. He uses color itself to organise the chaos. Treats it almost like a design tool.
Black and white is more forgiving. The moment you add color, everything gets more complicated. Every extra red sign, blue jacket, yellow taxi or billboard is competing for attention. If the image doesn't have form or structure, color pulls the eye in ten different directions.
Vibrancy is not the same thing as structure. Richness in color doesn't automatically equal value.
His actual tools were worth writing down:
- Color blocking. Large slabs of red, blue, yellow, green against something more neutral. A coat, a car, a wall, a sign. Treated as color shapes first, objects second.
- Shadow used like black ink. Carving the frame into bold graphic zones. People become silhouettes at the edge of light.
- Distance. He composes like a cinematographer. Finds the arrangement of lines, color blocks and light first. Then lets people walk into that space.
Compared to Alex Webb, who layers density like multiple micro stories colliding in one image, Gruyaert has fewer but stronger shapes. Color and shadow doing most of the narrative work.
Three lessons I pulled out for my own shooting:
- Hunt for color, not just moments. Before worrying about what the person is doing, ask how the colors are behaving. If I remove the people, would the image still hold itself together?
- Use shadows to clean up clutter. Backlight turns busy streets into silhouettes. Bright patches pull the eye directly where it needs to go.
- Build the stage first. Compose before the subject even enters.
In most street photography, the person is assumed to be the main character. Flip that. Assume color or light is the main character. Chaos stops being something you eliminate. It becomes structure.
That is what pointed me to the next project.
I already had six photos sitting on a Freeform board. I could feel there was something there. I just couldn't name it. Gruyaert gave me the direction. Then I watched Sinners, and the 1.43:1 IMAX crop settled it. Gruyaert-esque photos in IMAX format.
That is the project I am closing now.
Two parts. Colors, shadows, filling the frame. Malé reduced to slabs of red, blue, green, yellow, carved out by light.
It has probably been the most fun project I have done with Infinara.
The next one is already sitting in my head.
I know it will be a hard one to build a collection around. Not the kind of thing you can just walk out and find. It will take time, patience, and a lot of walking.
I think it will be worth it in the end.
Lets see how it goes.