Chinese tea · black, flat colour, two hands
Thirty-four Chinese teas held in the dark. Hands appear as a few cream contours, colour arrives as flat shapes cut by the edge, and the leaf is the one real thing.
34 teas · 7 categories
Almost everything is taken away, and what is left has to work harder. Hands are not outlined; only the edge that catches light is drawn, and the eye completes the rest, which is why the gesture reads as careful rather than illustrated. That restraint fits a tea bowl, because drinking is nearly always two hands and one small vessel and nothing else in the frame. Colour is used as pure shape — a red quarter-circle, a yellow half-disc, a curve of orange — and pushed to the edges, so the centre stays black and the liquor is the brightest thing on the page. Names are set small and widely spaced, behaving as a caption to an image rather than a label on a product. Dark grounds also flatter the teas that photograph worst: silver needle and gongting pu-erh look like nothing on white paper and like objects here.