“I miss black and white cinema. It is intrinsically artistic and more powerful. One could create volume and depth in the image. When filming in colour, the colours themselves provide the contrast, and define the separation of space. Let me say this: Picasso wouldn’t have achieved the same social and artistic impact with Guernica if he had used colour. For my part, I grew accustomed to photographing in black and white, creating what I call murals of light…”
From Shadows and Mexican Skies: An Interview with Gabriel Figueroa by Walter Rippel and Laura Waddington. Photo scanned from the Spanish print original of El Amante Cine, no. 12, Buenos Aires, November 1992.
Gabriel Figueroa was my favourite cinematographer at the time, thanks to his work on Luis Buñuel‘s and Emilio Fernández‘s films.