Notes on the Misinterpretation of Colors

Notes on the Misinterpretation of Colors is a long-form photographic project by Martin Kessler, produced under the auspices of STChM. The work documents mixed-race couples through a dual process: the affective intimacy of portraiture and the excessive rigor of chromatic analysis. Each image is subjected to multiple layers of visual dissection — from the topical surface of skin to the clinical depths of subsurface scattering, from visible light to infrared and ultraviolet registers. Color codes, spectral graphs, reflectance curves, and computational mappings are assembled alongside the portraits, producing an archive that appears exhaustive yet proves unstable.

The project satirises the obsession with precision and classification, showing that the more levels of measurement are applied, the further one drifts from truth. Difference cannot be secured in code, chart, or spectrum; it fractures across perception, culture, and technology. What emerges is not certainty but inept categorisation: an endless accumulation of data that fails to capture the intimacy of love. By staging this collapse, the project exposes the limits of visual science while affirming the irreducibility of the human relation.