Black & White

I never could get the hang of Thursdays....

Black and White

If you're photographing in color you show the color of their clothes - if you use black and white, you will show the color of their soul. ~Author Unknown

Those who, like me, are children of the 70's or later, pretty much take for granted the ability to photograph our world in color. But color photography was still a rather recent development when I was born, the first instant color film having been developed by Polaroid in 1963.

But today, years after photography has advanced to produce "living color," photographers still return to black and white images purposefully and frequently. Which causes us to ask, why this purposeful "regression"?



Simply put, there is a quality to black and white photography that captures the indefinable essence of a picture unlike anything that color can achieve. Color photographs are very detailed, accurate accounts of what happened; but black and white photographs strip away all the peripheral data and allow us to focus on the essence of the moment. Where a color photo would be a newspaper account about the tragic death of a child, a black and white photo would be a poem of lament written by the mother whose baby has been lost forever.

Take for example, the following color photos. In each one, there is some element of the photo that distracts from the person being photographed--brightly-colored shirts or shorts, beach balls, and foliage. True, they are accurate accounts of the moment. But click on each picture to see what happens when the color is taken away.






Suddenly, instead of busyness, you have simplicity. You find yourself looking in the eyes of the man, observing the definition of the muscles in his torso. The laughter of the first seems intense, yet frozen in time, as if it has yet to be completed. You contemplate the emotions of the last; is he pensive, curious, lonely?

I'm grateful for color. How fascinating the world is with all its varied hues and tones! But how quickly in life we allow color to block our view of what is truly important--what is inside us. Not that we should downplay the beauty in variety; in fact, we celebrate it. But we also realize that our colors are only what is on the surface; that which is real and lasting and meaningful--that which binds us together and helps us to see we are all on equal ground--can only be seen when we look beyond color to the deeper reality beneath.