Anodyne
Sunday, December 04, 2005
 

And Your Problem With Black and White Photography is...?

Well, first off, I'm speaking not with my critic/historian hat on, but as someone making images.

My inveighing against black and white pictures wasn't meant to extend to every practicing photographer, just to me, personally. It's a kind of "rule" I was surprised to find myself telling myself I had to obey. As a critic I like and admire artists such as Hill & Adamson, Friedlander, Evans & etc. But my sense of whole categories of B&W imagery being available, "readymade," makes me think that if I'm to make pictures that don't look too much like someone else's, then I should probably stay away from B&W.

Plus, I can't print to save my life, can't compose through a viewfinder, and have zero interest in Zone System style tech talk. Again, these prejudices are particular to me, but they guide and direct me toward the "realism" of (unfiltered or digitally unmodified) color, and away from the "abstraction" of B&W.

(For the record, my picture-making hat also tells me that digital modifications of contrast, light levels, etc., like those characterizing the accomplished work of my friend Scott McFarland, are off-limits to me, but that digital manipulation of an image's composition (eg., Henry Peach Robinson-style combinations of multiple exposures into a single seamless image) is perfectly OK. Why this is I don't know.)

(Image: William Henry Fox Talbot, Lace, 1844)
- posted by cjb @ 11:35 PM


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