Journal
One colour, one gesture
Red Room was built on a single rule: one colour, one dancer, and no second idea allowed on set.
( Published )
( Category )
Behind the shoot
( Reading time )
4 min read
Hollis & Rye sent a pair of trousers and one word: movement. Everything else was ours to decide. We painted a small studio wall and floor the same red, hired a dancer instead of a model, and agreed that nothing else would enter the frame.
A single colour sounds like a limitation. On the day it works like a metronome. Every pose is measured against the same background, so the only thing that changes from frame to frame is the body.
Let the trousers do the talking
Wide trousers only read when they move. We shot at 1/500 and asked for jumps, falls and slow turns, then kept the camera at hip height so the fabric filled the lower half of the frame.
The best frames came after the dancer stopped performing for us. Around the second hour the movements got smaller and stranger. That is where the sitting and lying pictures come from.
Editing to one colour
Red is unforgiving in the grade. Push it and skin turns orange, pull it and the room looks like brick. I set the red once on the widest frame, copied it to every picture, and only corrected skin after that.
If the colour changes between two frames, the story changes too.
— Nora Steinmann, Zürich
More notes
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reading.
May 2026
·
Behind the shoot
·
4 min read
One colour, one gesture
May 2026
Behind the shoot
One colour, one gesture
( Read the note )
May 2026
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Field notes
·
4 min read
Tailoring in tall grass
May 2026
Field notes
Tailoring in tall grass
( Read the note )
Apr 2026
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Kit
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3 min read
Packing light for the road
Apr 2026
Kit
Packing light for the road
( Read the note )