Red

The Power Of Red
Revolutions are ignited by it, the camera loves it and people go to court over it – no other colour has the extraordinary appeal of red, says Charlotte Sinclair. There are still some quiet, tucked-away quarters of the Earth where colour is so rarely happened upon that the sight of it is as shocking to the eye as a punch to the face. Upon the Tibetan plateau in Nepal, in a lunar landscape called Mustang, there is almost nothing but grey – tall, grey corridors of barren rock, wide, grey riverbeds, and grey mule trains walking the high-altitude paths. In this monochrome panorama sits a village called Kagbeni, where novice Buddhist monks play football in the monastery courtyard wearing blood-red robes. The wind whipping up the grey dust seems to also animate the colour, turning their hems into flames that lick about their ankles. Against the endless grey, the colour is so arresting that it seems to burn the memory on to your retina. Only red has such an impact.