The Color of Black and White
Stay awhile...
Black and white images speak to me like God’s canvas, perfect diffused light, on a foggy day. Deep, often moody, and full of gorgeous contrast in monotone, my eyes often stop and meditate on what seems more real and haunting. Stripped down, naked of color.
From Ansel Adams’ zoned landscapes, to the street-life of Henri Cartier Bresson, the unrelenting portraits of society’s misfits by Diane Arbus, the movement of fashionable, theatrical stills in Richard Avedon’s work, Fan Ho’s light and shadow work of the Living Theater of Hong Kong, Harold Feinstein’s life on Coney Island, not to forget women like Margaret Bourke-White and Vivian Maier (whose work was discovered after her death) or a whole new generation of impactful artists like Damon Baker’s black and white portraits…, black and white is mood.
It is the essence of the entire craft. (This story is clipped due to too many images - click “view entire message” in your email)
Over the years I have spoken to many people about photography (understatement). It usually turns out the older generation (older than me!) are fifty-fifty with black and white. Many are reminded of poverty and hardship when seeing black and white images. Color is the gift that keeps on giving to them. Then there are those, like me, that can’t stop feeling, like an engine that won’t shut down, when looking at black and white images. The young love it all and many have embraced film techniques again. The original slow and patient form of photography.
It’s hard for me to pick just a handful of photographers. I can’t leave out Elliott Erwitt, the way he saw life, street life or Dorothea Lange, who without her work, we wouldn’t feel the overwhelming pain and fortitude of the Great Depression or realize that many of her images effected social change.
It was Margaret Bourke-White who took some of the first photographs inside German concentration camps following the end of World War II. She captured the last pictures of Mahatma Gandhi.
Without Ansel Adams or the Sierra Club, we wouldn’t have Kings Canyon as a national park.
As I was removing old art books and various other treasures from the inside of the living room coffee table yesterday (to dust), I noticed, slipped between the very heavy Leonardo Davinci and Annie Lebovitz’s American Music a thin “Popular Photography” magazine from 2016. I smiled as I remembered grabbing this from dad’s desk, after he passed. He had saved it. On the address label was some numbers he scribbled. I’m most certain it was a configuration for a black and white image I printed for him of a monk in the fog, hurrying to the monastery in Mt. Angel from a few years prior. It needed to be hung.
For so long, in these last four years I felt I was just no good. No good as a wife, mom, photographer, person or anything. I had a deep longing to keep up my love for photography, but mourning took over. I mourned. I stood frozen watching the pictures I wouldn’t take.
Camera or not, I no longer feel I’m missing out. I’m not anything compared to my photog heroes, but I’m proud of the work. Perhaps that’s what age and grief can do. It slows you down just enough to learn something.
Or maybe stay awhile and write about…
“I was drawn to street photography because there are pictures everywhere there, a woman holding a dog, a baby screaming to be put in a pram, kids playing punch ball, stores with huge barrels of pickled kosher pickles outside. I wanted to photograph life, and here it was.”
- Harold Feinstein
“Photography is an art of observation. It has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.” - Elliott Erwitt
Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter. - Ansel Adams
“A photograph is a secret about a secret.” - Diane Arbus
“I can see myself as a very old man in a terrific wheelchair. Only, I won’t be photographing the tree outside my window, the way Steichen did. I’ll be photographing other older people.”
- Richard Avedon
I have freelanced for others, also covered 16 years of engagements and weddings, covered family through the years, have millions of pics on iphone, boxes of film and c.d.s in storage… (someday I won’t see my family yelling from a mountaintop about it). I have loved it all.
So many lovely images here, Deborah! I really love your portrait of your Mom and her longtime friend. You caught their joie de vivre!
I’m a big fan of black-and-white photography too. But sometimes I feel the real story of certain images is best told in color—their juxtaposition and relationships, their intensity and depth.
I don’t think it matters if we’re considered good or not as long as we do it. As Vonnegut said so wisely, creativity is soul-growing work. To which I say, Amen! So I hope you keep on keeping on, Deborah!
Beautiful article and work Deborah! You have an amazing eye and I love that you shoot in b/w. For me that captures the essence of a person or scene; and at the same time, leaves room for mystery, some inexpressible quality...I love b/w films as well, probably more so than color ones (except maybe for the 3-strip Technicolor ones they shot from the 40s & 50s, where they look like paintings). Are you familiar with the films of Powell and Pressburger? Those guys were master craftsmen! The Red Shoes, Stairway to Heaven, Black Narcissus; incredible stuff. Anyway, thanks for sharing your inspiration and beautiful work.