Constantine “Costa” Manos was an American photographer best known for his vivid images of Boston and Greece. A longtime member of Magnum Photos, he was born in Columbia, South Carolina, the son of Greek immigrants.
In 2002, I took one of his street photography workshops in Maine. His critiques were sharp, honest, and always insightful. To this day, I often find myself wondering, What would Manos say about this photograph? The experience was both humbling and transformative.
What impressed me most was his approach to color. His photographs are bold and crisp, alive with saturated hues and deliberate composition. He taught me to see color in a completely new way. At the time, I had never encountered photographs quite like his.
In the preface to his now out-of-print 1995 book, American Color, Manos wrote:
My favorite pictures have always been complex ones which ask questions and pose problems, but leave the answers and solutions to the viewer. These are images with a long and evolving life, in which the photograph may transcend the subject and become the subject. Central to the strength of these images is photography’s most precious and unique quality, believability: that the moment preserved on a piece of paper is true and unaltered, that it really happened and will never happen again.
The photographs in American Color are uncaptioned — and they don’t need captions. They invite reflection. They remind me that powerful images can be found close to home, and that beauty often emerges from the ordinary.
As Magnum President Cristina de Middel observed:
“[H]is ability to capture the poetry of everyday life with unmatched sensitivity and a keen eye for light and color has left an indelible mark on the history of photography.”