What color is love?
June 20, 2015
When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in Black and white, you photograph their souls!
― Ted Grant, Photographer
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When we first set out to get to know someone intimately, a question often asked is, “What’s your favorite color?” It’s one of those rudimentary “small talk” questions that go along with a whole list of favorites like, “What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream, your favorite flower or even your favorite junk food?” I myself being a graphic designer, tend to always answer the favorite color question the same way, “I’m an artist, I don’t have a favorite, I love them all.” I mean, really, how could I possibly choose one color as my favorite—the one I love the most—every color is beautiful. Is there a best color in God’s pallet?
Is the intense green of the grass after a rainstorm in June a better color than the blue of the sky on a crisp Spring morning in May? Is the brown of the dirt on a young child after playing in the mud any less beautiful than the bright red of a lipstick adorning a woman’s face? Or what about the golden yellow of a sunrise compared to the coral pink and orange of a sunset? Each color is uniquely beautiful.
But unfortunately, that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and even more unfortunate is that the “red” or “blue” that you and I may see is not the same “red” or “blue” that everyone sees—and the proof is black and white.
This past week, nine people were murdered in Charleston, South Carolina because of color. It wasn’t because of the white paint that coated the walls outside of the church they chose to worship in, nor was it because of the yellow daisies that patterned the dress of one of the women. It wasn’t because of the blue tie the young man wore as he sat next to his wife with the red polka dot dress and it certainly wasn’t because of the gold cross hanging on the wall. No, the reason was because of the color of their skin.
Something is terribly wrong in our world.
If the slaughtering of innocent human beings because of their skin color is what is needed by fanatics to light the way for their racist ideologies, I’d rather be plunged back into an abyss of darkness—void of all color for certainly it can’t be any darker than watching the horror of how man treats man.
What we need to understand is that the spectrum of color that exists in art exists in the the same spectrum of human kind—every color is equal in the fact that every color is different. We are all the same in the fact that we will never be the same. We are all united by the reality that all colors and all cultures are distinct, individual and uniquely beautiful. We are harmonious in the reality that we are all held to this earth by the same gravity and we share the air that keeps us alive. One color no better, and one color no worse that the other—just different. Our differences in color make my brothers and sisters on this planet no less themselves than I am me.
We are all different. We are not the same. But that’s beautiful. And that’s okay. In the quest for unity and peace, we cannot blind ourselves and expect to be all the same. Because in this, we all have an underlying belief that everyone should be the same as us at some point. We are not on a journey to become the same or to be the same. But we are on a journey to see that in all of our differences, in all of our colors, that is what makes us beautiful as a human race, and if we are ever to grow, we ought to learn to accept all colors as colors to love.
