OSTEND, BELGIUM, 1988, HARRY GRUYAERT

Water and sky. Land and sea. Light and dark. Harry Gruyaert’s photograph of a day on the seafront in Ostend begs to be called elemental. An everyday scene that takes in new life (notice the pram) and the encroaching immensity of the darkness that keeps edging in on all of us. (Or maybe we’re projecting our own fears?)

Gruyaert is a Belgian photographer born in 1941 who was one of the pioneers in the use of colour in art photography. Many of his images are designed around it, exist because of it.

“Colour is more physical than black and white,” he once said, “more intellectual and abstract. With a black and white photograph, you generally want to know what’s going on between the subjects. With colour, you should be immediately affected by the different shades that express a situation.”

The images gathered together in a new book of his photographs are full of quiet, even banal moments. But they are transformed by Gruyaert’s eye, an eye that can find beauty in a raincloud, flaking paint or a string of lightbulbs.

Harry Gruyaert is published by Thames & Hudson, priced £40.