Two of my favourite contemporary photographers are Yener Torun and Damion Berger. Each transforms the way we look upon the world by using colour in almost opposite ways.

Torun is not a professional photographer but an architect from Istanbul, whose work I have published before on Pandaemonium. His shots of Istanbul, usually taken on an iPhone, are of the city as few will have seen it, not the Istanbul of ancient buildings, grand mosques and tradition, but that of modernist lines, minimalist patterns and brilliant saturated colours. He has a stunning Instagram account that reveals not simply what a city can look like, but also what we often do not see. He has a photographic eye that I wished I possessed. Check out his Instagram account and his website.

Damion Berger is a London-born, New York-based conceptual photographer, who often photographs the familiar – swimming pools or fireworks – but in a way that deconextualizes them, and renders them alien, almost magical. He usually works in black and white, with long and multiple exposures, and often in the negative, reversing light and dark. The photos here are from  his fireworks series, Black Powder. We always associate fireworks with brilliant colour. But in removing colour, Berger has made them more brilliant still.

Yener Torun

Damion Berger