Everything in Grayscale

Black and white photography has this pretentious mythology built around it—timeless, emotionally elevated, turning the mundane into something transcendent—and I could perform that whole argument, but the photos Hedi Slimane shot of Anna Selezneva don’t need that kind of defense. They just look incredible. Selezneva has one of those faces that seems specifically engineered for high contrast: all bone structure and intent, nothing wasted. Under his lens the whole thing becomes architectural. You look at these images and some quiet part of your brain starts to suggest that color might be overrated—that a life perceived entirely in tonal gradations would be a reasonable trade.

I’m not going to dress it up further. Sometimes you see something and the honest response is: damn.