Most of Justin Maxon’s photos are black-and-white, blurry, and hyperbolic, and many have been published in high-profile magazines likes Mother Jones, and the blogs of Time magazine and The New Yorker.

Organizations like the Aaron Siskind Foundation and the Magnum Foundation have awarded Maxon funding to continue his work.

However, when Maxon, who has been documenting Chester since 2008, showed his haunting, other-worldly photos to the city’s residents, they found them creepy, according to NewsWorks, the online home of WHYY.

Maxon learned this after he started carrying around a book of his photos. He would stop people on the street in Chester, introduce himself, and show them his work.

Community members told him the photos were gloomy. Or gothic. He recently showed the book to a police officer who called it “spooky.”

Maxon started to realize that his work, though well-intentioned, might be misrepresenting the community.

Race is an important factor. Maxon is white, and his subjects are black. And in his photos, he tries to highlight important issues in the black community, including negative interactions with the police, unsolved murders, and rampant violence.

But the photos are so stark and surreal that they make it difficult for outsiders to relate to the people depicted, Maxon said.

So he decided to bring color back into his work. He has started painting his black and white images with watercolors. That’s something of a throwback, actually. Watercolors were used before film was invented to heighten realism and create images that were more relatable, he said.

And so he’s painting the people of Chester in color. Because he wants others to see the full complexity of their lives.

Click here to read more about Justin Maxon’s art.