Tony Mendoza was born in Havana, Cuba in 1941. His black-and-white photographs are in the collections of major museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the LA County Museum of Art, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

It wasn't until 2004, however, when Mendoza closed down his black-and-white darkroom and bought a digital camera, that he started shooting color. The results are almost hyper-real. Mendoza tells his story of coming around to color — despite being red-green colorblind — in a charming essay he wrote to accompany his photos. You can see more, and read his story, here, in Lens Culture.