Webb Of Colour

Magnum photographer Alex Webb is best known for his colourful street photography, but his influences are wider than you might imagine, as he reveals in this exclusive interview.

- Keith Wilson

The grey Georgian symmetry of Somerset House in London is not the usual habitat of Magnum maestro and street photographer Alex Webb, but the surroundings are not entirely unfamiliar either. Just over three years ago, he was one of those featured in a group show here entitled ‘Cartier-Bresson: A Question Of Colour’, curated by William A. Ewing, formerly of New York’s International Center of Photography. Recalling that exhibition, Alex says, “The thesis was that Cartier-Bresson hated colour, and yet these photographers who work in colour were clearly influenced in some way by Cartier-Bresson.” He leans back in his chair to examine some of the prints that surround us: “Some of these pictures were in that exhibition,” he notes.

It’s the first day of Photo London 2016 and we’re sitting in the Naval Board Room, its tall white walls radiating with frames of vibrancy and energy from a dozen or so of Webb’s best-known works. In the heart of Georgian London, his images offer a glimpse of Latin America’s chaotic street life: Cuba, Haiti, Mexico, countries that have fascinated him for nearly 40 years.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that Alex’s vivid imagery, succinctly encapsulated in the titles of some of his books (Hot Light/Half-Made Worlds, Under a Grudging Sun, The Suffering of Light), is the antithesis of Cartier-Bresson’s gritty, monochrome-only moments. But the connection between the two is stronger than it seems. Webb cites Cartier-Bresson’s The Decisive Moment as one of two books (the other being Robert Frank’s