I Shot a Roll of Kodak Portra 400 by Florian Tourneux
Quidam is a personal project on wich I’m working on about the Holocaust during World War II. Not finished yet, the title isn’t fixed but I liked this word suggested by Amélien Ledouppe my photographer friend.
The idea behind this series is to create a relation between these historical places, the people who were there during that time, what they have become and the humans going, living or working in those place today.
This project is shot on Kodak Portra 400. I usually prefer Black and White but I felt that these images deserved some colours and show things as they are and not a darker interpretation with more “Pathos”. It’s already sad enough like that, not need to add more drama.
Initially I wanted to work on a Rolleiflex 2.8F but after the first portraits I noticed a focus problem, so I switched to my Hasselblad 500 C/M with two lenses: the CF 50 Distagon F/4 FLE and CF 150 Sonnar f/4.
I give my colour rolls films to develop at a Bruxelles developer, Laboriver, and it’s always pleasant for me to scan them after and to discover the pictures, sometimes weeks after the shot itself. The restitution of the colour from the Portra is really beautiful for me, it’s less saturated and I find the colours really neutral and well-preserved, without big chromatic deviance in daylight even sunny, cloudy, raining or even snowing. From my opinion it’s the best colour film for shot in documentary projects. In all ways I’ll continue to use it. The only bad point I reproach to this film is his cost.
You can find more about this series on my work on my website and Instagram.
Florian Tourneux
