Fred Herzog, Man with Bandage, 1968 Courtesy Equinox Gallery and Estate of Fred Herzog. Modified to remove bandage on face and mailbox changed from red to blue. Link to original
Thoughts on the color red. In Aperture No. 260 there is an interesting article on the color red by Steven Shore (Shore, 2025). Using a modified version of Fred Herzog’s photograph, Shore describes how a painter can choose the shade of red they want. They can choose not to use color at all. They can place it where they want on the canvas in relation to the other colors they have chosen. Shore references William Eggleston discussing the color red but does not share all of what he said, so I looked it up. Below Eggleston discusses red while talking about his famous 1973 photograph Greenwood, Mississippi (usually called The Red Ceiling):
* Eggleston, W. (1973) Greenwood, Mississippi [dye transfer print]. Commonly known as The Red Ceiling.*
“The photograph was like a Bach exercise for me because I knew that red was the most difficult color to work with. A little red is usually enough, but to work with an entire red surface was a challenge. It was hard to do. I don’t know of any totally red pictures, except in advertising. The photograph is still powerful. It shocks you every time.” (Eggleston, 1992, p. 28)
Shore is interested in what red does to the picture as an object—how it clips on film, goes flat, refuses to sit in space. Looking at his two Herzogs, I noticed something else. Red changes how we read an object it does not touch. The man’s face looks more focused when the mailbox is red than when it is navy blue. The two faces have the same exposure. Once you know that, they still do not look the same. The red seems to pull the eye and, with it, to change how we read the face: sharper, more present, more “correctly” exposed. Red stands out, and everything near it is judged in its light.
Then I looked closely in photoshop. See below.
We already know that shape can trick perception. Müller-Lyer lines of equal length do not look equal; a classic illusion is enough to prove the point.
The first diagram our eye is tricked into perceiving the middle line as being longest when in fact the second diagram proves it is not
What I have not seen discussed as often is how a color can alter our sense of an unrelated object in the same frame—not by touching its pixels, but by focusing attention. Josef Albers comes close in his theory of the Interaction of Color – simultaneous contrast, spreading, color constancy, and the way a strong hue steals attention and recalibrates everything next to it (Albers, 1963). Color is not what it appears to be. The mailbox is not red. The metal absorbs most wavelengths of light and reflects others; those reflected wavelengths reach the retina, where three types of cones register them, and the brain names the result “red.” We photograph surfaces. We see light (photons) that never entered them.
In architecture school, Cheryl E. Morgan, FAIA, taught color as a tool for creating a feeling and orienting focus. She shared an evolutionary story: we notice red first because it was the color of the open mouths of the animals that hunted us, and the people who did not see it in time did not survive. Whether or not that particular origin is accurate, the design lesson is. Color can aim the eye. The stop sign is the everyday proof. It is not merely painted; it is placed so that red interrupts whatever else you were looking at and tells you where to look next. That is what happens in Herzog’s picture. But the mailbox is not the subject. The man is. But red behaves like a stop sign inside the frame. It claims the first look, then sends the second look to the face—and the face, receiving that second look, seems better seen than the identical face beside a blue box. I’ll repeat my hypothesis – color can alter our sense of an unrelated object in the same frame.
Painters can decide whether red will do that work. Photographers only decide whether to include the red that is already there. But Herzog’s photo asks another question. Are we using color in other areas of a composition and not even knowing it. This idea is worth exploring further. As it is my understanding of how we perceive color and why certain colors change our thoughts. Shore is right about the painter and photographer difference. What I don't know and now question is are photographers unknowingly using color to alter perceptions of unrelated objects in our compositions. To be continued.
Notes:
Albers, J. (1963) Interaction of Color. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Shore, S. (2025) ‘Stephen Shore on the Color Red’, Aperture, no. 260 (Fall). Available at: https://aperture.org/editorial/stephen-shore-on-the-color-red/ (Accessed: 18 September 2026).
Eggleston, W. (1992) Ancient and Modern. New York: Random House, p. 28.
POSTED BY JON
We all dream of America
Notes after Torah study- the Patriarch
If you are a believer—whether Christian, Jew, or Muslim—the beginning of our faith starts with Abraham, where the covenant was made. There are layers to this though that are strange.
For reference I'm going to use the acronym “NHI” to represent Non-human intelligence. This could be angels, watchers or beings referred to in the heavenly court reference in Genesis or something else we do not know of.
The story (as taught in Judaism) is this:
Abraham’s father, Terakh, owned an idol shop. One day, while his father was away and Abraham was left in charge of the store, he took an axe and smashed all the idols except the biggest one. He then placed the axe in the idol’s hands. When his father returned, he was angry and asked what happened. Abraham explained that the large idol had become upset with the other idols and destroyed them.
“You know these idols can’t move,” his father shouted.
Abraham cleverly answered, “If they can’t save themselves, then we are superior to them. So why should we worship them?” [^1]
It is Abraham’s intellectual and spiritual perception — his ability to see through what everyone else around him accepted without question that caught the attention of the Creator of the universe—whom we call HaShem—thereby becoming the father of the Jewish people.
My dog “Autiemae” a blue healer. I got her when I had cows but she was scared of cows so now she herds me and my friends.
ברוך השם
Its not much...but its my little place in the world and I am grateful.