The Colour Journal

The Colour Journal explores colour in art and photography in a set of six volumes, each devoted to a single colour: blue, red, yellow, green, white and black.

This first Issue runs to a mammoth 400 pages with twenty contributions by international art historians, writers, anthropologists, philosophers, critics, artists and photographers, starting with the colour blue.

The colours have been selected as a starting point or a pretext to tell wider stories, a means of revealing the story within the story: we all know Henri Matisse's Blue Nudes, but who can say the same about Biskra, the forgotten Algerian oasis that inspired him? We may also know about the ultramarine pigment that Yves Klein patented, but who has heard of Edouard Adam, a merchant in Montparnasse who discovered its formula?

Aiming to bring depth to the attractive images of fashion magazines and Instagram feeds, the journal will delve into familiar moments of art history to uncover what lies beneath. The publishers have travelled from Idaho to Guangxi, from antiquity to the present day, to create a dialogue between forgotten archives and contemporary photography – we are able to follow a denim hunter in the American West, to visit one of China's last cultural minorities, to peek into Helmut Newton's private collection of Polaroids and to dive into David Hockney's chlorinated swimming pools.

The Colour Journal contains works by Giotto, Sassoferrato, Yves Klein, Georges Braque, Alberto Giacometti, Constantin Brancusi, Helena Almeida, Anna Atkins, William Henry Fox Talbot, Tim Barber, Elin O'Hara Slavik, David McDermott & Peter McGough, Henry Peter Bosse, Arthur Wesley Dow, Frederick K. Coulson, William H. Cades, Jean-Eugène Durand, Paul Burty Haviland, Kenro Izu, Lourdes de Castro, Henri Matisse, Jean Geiser, Auguste Maure, Felix Moulin, John Beasley, Lehnert & Landrock, Hélène Adant, Jacques Majorelle, David Hockney, Julius Shulman, Mel Roberts, Bob Mizer, George Tate, Ed Ruscha, John Divola, Grant Mudford, Reenie Barrow, Jonh Schott, Henry Wessel, Rene Burri, Raymond Depardon, Bruce Davidon, Robert Adams, Mark Swope, Joe Deal, Lewis Baltz, Frank Gohlke, Lee Friedlander, Bernard Plossu, William Claxton, Charles Brittin, Marvin Silver, Seymour Rosen, Ed Ruscha, Helmut Newton, Cecil Beaton, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, John Vachon, David Abrahams, Jeff Boudreau, Charles Fréger, Alexandre Guirkinger, Robbie Lawrence, Rafard & Roussel, Daniel Shea.