Just look at this a picture by Alex Webb.

Alex Webb is a genius.
His brain is wired differently from most of us.
Genius, a description I very rarely consider using.
I have never met Alex Webb. Once I asked him if I could join him at
work, he declined.

I could not work with someone watching me.

I have only met one genius in my life. It was while filming Mrs Brown.
Billy Connolly. His brain is also wired differently.
Hardly a classical actor, not knowing his ass from his elbow, coming or going, right from left. However a very willing actor, keen to learn and desperate to take very precise direction.
No, his genius lies in his ability to tell a story. After a days filming, with all its ups and downs, triumphs and successes, we would retreat to eat and drink. Billy would join us, refusing the drink, we stop, sit down, settle. And it starts.

The days events, those we have just so recently completed spill out of Billy’s effervescent brain. In the shape only Billy could create.
His stories : the mundane would become extraordinary, the every day would sparkle and actions become hilarious.
His thoughts would become wild imaginings. All this in a non-stop tale after tale. Playful, and delightful. What a piece of theatre! So funny, Billy so mad keen to keep up the performance. I have never experienced anything like it. It is clear that he processes the world in his own distinct way, his internal patterns are incongruous.
He is wired differently . Genius.
As I have said, Alex Webb is also a genius, a visual genius. He too sees the world in his own distinct way. His patterns are about layers, planes, stories in unfolding depth.
Take a look at the picture at the top. How many incidents, how many moments, how many stories do you recognise ?
The man on the left, hiding with the help of a sports folder, denying his obvious existence. The couple on the right, not quite in an embrace but close. He nonchalant and dominant, recently reading a newspaper? Her, willing, though slightly holding back, her left arm refusing to grasp him. Is he joking about their future in the adjacent registers office?
The silhouetted man and child, waiting for who? Stranded in a no man’s land. Will someone come out of that glass door and laugh or cry? And then the arch, as if to tell us that this is a tableau, a static theatre production, commanding us to look.
As I said . . much ado
There is a great narrative potential in this multi-layered image making . Bringing together activity, scenarios, happenstance. Together they weave a complex web of meaning, both visual and cerebral. Mysterious and enigmatic.
How does Alex web achieve this storytelling in depth?
First : he sees things differently, in a moment he can take in and absorb many layers of activity. Psychologists suggest that the maximum number of things we can see in action is about four. Any more than this is exceptional and has led to a theory of ‘rapid task switching’. Is Alex Webb a rapid task switcher?
Secondly : patience. I never was able to see Alex in action but I speculate that he walks and walks and walks before coming upon the ‘spot’. A place of potential. Perhaps he saw the arch in the picture and recognised the beginnings of an image. He settles as a hunter, waiting for his prey, ready to shoot, to get the shot.
Thirdly : concentration. How many of us would stand there, waiting, sooner or later our minds would wander, the moment missed. He must concentrate, ever watchful until the forces align, the stories come together. At that moment of conjunction he identifies the image before him, his wiring connects, the shutter released.
How long does he wait? How many times was he ready to surrender? How many times was the alignment not just so ? How many times was the image imagined captured?
Fourthly : the colour of course, we can’t ignore it, but it’s a complication. Alex’s earlier image making was predominantly black and white. The colour came along later

I wasn’t dealing with a brilliant colours and searing
light that dominates these worlds, places where vibrant
colour seems almost embedded in the culture.
As a result I turn to colour, which I have worked in ever since.

Alex choses his locations for the colour, vibrant colours. Haiti, Cuba, Mexico and Istanbul
Colour is a complication when trying to reveal layers or planes within an image. The tones of black and white, the many layers of grey, greatly assist the differentiation of the many planes. In a black and white image tonality is an aid to separation.
The colour can be a plane within the image that easily confuses the image. Areas of colour can easily become an accidental story rather than the intended story. Colour can easily take over the intended narrative.
So why choose colour if has this ability to confuse. I’m taking a guess here; but when well chosen, colour can add to the veracity of the story. If selected carefully, colour can help clarify a layer, help distinguish it from other layers. But, and it’s a big but, the colour has to be carefully controlled, looked at carefully and embedded in a complex whole.
To me it’s another complication, another factor to be dealt with, another indicator of Alex’s magnificent judgment and capability

He does it again and again. Genius.