The Market in Full Colour

Everything else I shoot in this city argues for restraint. Grey water, grey sky, a silhouette if the light cooperates. Then you walk into the market in April and the whole argument falls apart.

Those are chile ristras strung overhead, and they are doing something no landscape ever does for me: holding red, orange, yellow and green in one frame without any of it looking like an accident. Underneath sit delicata and acorn squash, sweet corn still in the husk, red onions going purple in the shade. Almost none of that grew here in April. The ristras are dried, the squash keeps for months, and the corn came a long way. Pike Place carries colour through the stretch of the year when Seattle produces none of its own, which is most of it.

The temptation at Pike Place is the fish throwers, the neon clock, the first Starbucks and the queue outside it. All of it has been photographed to death by people standing exactly where the guidebook said. A produce stall on an ordinary spring morning has no such problem.

I did not adjust the colour on this one. There was nothing to add.