Part A: An Introduction

Drain the color out and a photo and you will find monochronicity has two dimensions: perspective and contrast. Colors are evaluated as intermediates on a spectrum of light and dark. Shadows are enunciated, the texture more pronounced, the composition dramatized. This is the appeal of the black-and-white photograph.

Photographs were exclusively gray scale for centuries until the invention of color photography, and even then, the production methods were too expensive for color photography to be widely accepted. Color photography, in its most primitive form, was created in the process of superimposing filters of the three primary colors—cyan, magenta, and yellow—which, in a suitable mixture, could in theory produce any color artificially. Louis Ducos du Hauron invented this process in 1869 (16 Enyeart). Following Ducos du Hauron’s invention were a series of improvements, such as the Autochrome in 1907 and Kodachrome in 1938, although it was not until the 1970s and 1980s did the color photograph make its way into the media. While color photography and cinematography burst into the visual media scene in the last century, their monochrome counterparts are by no means overshadowed.

Black-and-white photography has made the smooth transition from a no-alternative social norm into a decision for photographers and cinematographers alike. Today, black-and-white photography remains a powerful medium, despite the sheer number of color photographs tilting the public in their (the color photographs’) favor.  Furthermore, I would argue that the monochrome photograph ranks equal to, if not trumps, color in a color-dominated society due to its inherently art-like qualities, nostalgic qualities, as well as scarcity in the visual media. Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida, Paul Grainge’s Monochrome Memories: Nostalgia and Style in Retro America, and Kevin Moore’s Starburst: Color Photography in America 1970-1980, and other texts further this argument, along with supplemental photographs.

Part B: An Affinity for Achromatopsia

Here is an observation: nine of the top 20 receivers of the 2013 Sony World Photography Awards are in black-and-white, while almost every other “casual” image you see, such as those of Facebook or advertisements or even the lecture halls, is one of saturation.  One of the appeals to black-and-white photography in comparison to color photography is that the subjects of black-and-white photography appear to be more abstract. That is, as Ansel Adams himself comments in Ansel Adams in Color, “a black-and-white photograph was an almost complete abstraction and could exist in a world of fantasy and stylization, simply because it was not dependent upon the blatant reality of color” (Enyeart, 31). A black-and-white photograph provides a departure from reality that places emphasis on form, with color distractions excised.

The two photographs above place emphasis on texture and composition. The pictures depict a moment so real, and yet no color is necessary in the photograph. Ansel Adams, one of the most renowned black-and-white photographers of the last century, supplements his own opinion: “I prefer black-and-white photography chiefly because it offers imaginative controls and a powerful degree of stylization” (Enyeart 151). That is, the subject becomes the photograph, and its message. Busying oneself with color–exposure, white balance, diversity–provides a distraction. While spectators regard underexposed color pictures as amateur and undesirable, an underexposed black-and-white photograph features a mood, which adds to the composition.

Above is a photograph taken in Istanbul of a young boy playing the accordion in the streets. One can identify instantly the photograph as one of art, and not of an advertisement. As Kevin Moore claims in Starburst, “black and white [photography] had long been the medium associated with both art photography and serious photojournalism” (8). The subtleties of the image, while abstract in that there are only varying types of gray, are very apparent. While color may shift a photograph closer to the realm of what us trichromats perceive as reality, black-and-white removes the hindrances of color so that the form, the composition itself builds the message. His slightly furrowed eyebrows, the discomfort of the camera on him, the adults that stroll by in the background;  these are all inescapable details of the photograph. The boy’s dire position, that some power forces him to live the way he lives instead of the freedom other boys his age might possess, is a message that the photograph communicates unrepressed, and without the veil of color.

Image sources:
http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2727/4027653436_f42c69ca98_b.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pseudo_hatred/4325784100/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Part C: An Affinity Continued

Snap! After the photographer captures a photograph, sometimes he or she makes the conscious decision to desaturate the photo. Monochrome photographs give rise to feelings of nostalgia and qualm one’s need to preserve memories. There exists the memory crisis, or inherent want to remember and memorialize; the nostalgia mode, then, pacifies these needs with black-and-white photography, emitting a visual sense of American memory, heritage, patrimony, and past (Grainge, 6).

Woody Allen is a famous director. He is also a principal opponent of colorization, directing many black-and-white films even after the proliferation of color cinematography. The black-and-white image is a signifier of nostalgia, a sentiment that even the public in the times when the primary mode of expression was black-and-white shares with the public of today. Of his own work Woody Allen remarks, “If I had portrayed New York in color rather than black-and-white in my movie Manhattan [1979], all the nostalgic connotations would have vanished. All the evocations of the city from old photographs and films would have been impossible to achieve in Technicolor” (Grainge, 3). Imagine if the picture suddenly became saturated. The lights would glow with color, the sky painted with color, and the picture would, in a sense, contain a sliver of life. Devoid of color, that life is destroyed into one we recognize as the past, a memory that we do not want to let go of, and art.

The sentiment grows stronger in parallel to the growth of color photography. In the black-and-white portraits below, the photographs highlight the nostalgic monochromatic effects, underscoring the noeme, or that-has-been.

In this manner, the lack of color translates the portraits into what Barthes would call the stigmata. The stigmata, or Catastrophe of Photography, that everything photographed inevitably must die. Or perhaps has already died.  The photograph is a “living image of a dead thing” (Barthes, 80). The imminent death of memories or of people ignites the propensity to capture photographs in black-and-white. The features of the woman in the middle photo: every detail is lucid, nothing escapes notice, the gray scale emphasizes her form. At the same time, she appears inaccessible, as the color dearth pushes her into another time, another reality separate from the colorful world of the present.

Image Sources:
http://photo.tutsplus.com/articles/inspiration/100-awe-inspiring-black-white-photographs/
http://digital-photography-school.com/27-beautiful-black-and-white-portraits

Part D: The Answer

While color photography permeates our lives, whether it be in the media or even the physiological process of how we see out of our own eyes, black-and-white photography provides a refreshing change in scenery. Once the status quo, black-and-white photography has now become a choice by virtue of newer, fresher technologies. This conscious effort to insert a hint of nostalgia or an extra layer of mood into a photo elevates the attention one gives to a black-and-white photo. The textures and composition spring alive, with the distraction of color removed. Nine of twenty award-winning photos are black-and-white because they are well composed, but nine of twenty award-winning photos are black-and-white also because black-and-white is a departure from reality and not how one truly perceives the world.

Even today, color photography represents excitement, innovation, and color itself is an enhancement to photographs. The strengthening of color photography breathed a different feel into monochrome images. In other words, “monochrome was able to punctuate the visual norm; it became a mark of depth in a culture of surface, an aesthetic of slowness in a climate of speed” (Grainge, 3). One scarcely finds black-and-white in one’s life (save for art galleries and old photo albums) and this rarity contributes to the worth of the photograph. Gray scale photographs are the punctum, to use Barthes’ word, in the stream of images that life exposes to a person in a day.

The process of recording sporting events becomes more and more elaborate as technologies become more and more sophisticated. Sports must be high-definition, perfectly exposed with a miniscule 1/1000^th of a second shutter speed, and of course, in color. That is why the photograph below placed third in the competition. It is a punctum that pricks the spectators in that it is out-of-place, that it scars, that it ingrains itself into the memory. Monochrome photographs are few in the visual media today, let alone a sports photograph, and there lies their appeal.

Source for all Sony competition images:
http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/04/winners-of-the-2013-sony-world-photography-awards/100504/

Part E: Then Color Photography…

Color photography in the 70s and 80s was viewed as a lesser art, one that was associated solely with advertising and entertainment, as, conversely, monochrome was seen as the pinnacle of art. Color photography becomes the awkward child—is it art? Reality? Both? Neither? When, if ever, does photography as art require the use of color?

Color photography of the 1970s “happened in a starburst…a promiscuous photographic enterprise, a flirtation with numerous practices and ideas occurring simultaneously in other art movements and the popular culture” (Moore, 10). While color was a symbol of the new technological improvements, it was met with much backlash, which is me reiterating Moore’s words: “Yet the rise of color—and resistance to it—was a cultural phenomenon” (8). This lead to the rise of many prominent color artists, such as William Eggleston, who invariable created a colony of critics for delving into the foreign, norm-threatening new. “[Eggleston’s] pictures look insignificant, dull, even tacky, on the wall” claims Janet Malcolm, a writer for the New Yorker. Like Facebook site updates, people complain but ultimately adjust to new climates. The color photograph functions in a way different from black-and-white, with traits of its own.

The color photograph is versatile and strives to be art. I established that black-and-white is prominent in the art scene; statistically speaking, there are magnitudes more color photographs than black-and-white captured nowadays that the fact that black-and-white can compete with color as art and not just outdatedness is a significant achievement. A color photograph assumes its position in the art world not only for its composition, as is the monochrome, but more so for its color information.

Andreas Feininger in Successful Color Photography notes that the transition from black-and-white photography to color exceeds a mere change of film on a film camera or settings on a D-SLR (or filter, for those on Instagram); the difference is both technical and psychological. Technical, in that color photography demands “greater ingenuity and skill” as numerous more considerations are necessary to take a color photograph properly versus a black-and-white one. Psychological, in that monochrome is abstract, while color photography is “primarily realistic” (10). The example below helps to illuminate Feininger’s idea of color as a realistic art:

The photograph above is casual, a lifestyle photograph. It is simple, and yet it is award-winning. It is realistic, in that the colors are vivid and as one would expect.  The caption is as minimalistic as the photo: “Summer family – the images show the photographer’s family on a seaside holiday in Liguria in the summer of 2012.” Alice Caputo is the photographer. The photograph depicts Caputo’s rendering of a relaxing vacation, a depiction that resonates with the viewer and forges a connection between viewer and photograph. Caputo angles the camera strategically, so that the lens captures neutral gray walls while allowing a peek into the pastel insides of the room, all captured in an instant. The glimpse into the room (a tableaux of flip flops and clothes and organized clutter and the always comfortable stomach on bed pose) soothes the stressful or busy life the viewer of the photograph may or may not lead. The photograph elicits feelings of empathy from the viewer. This is why the color photograph is real. The colors are natural, beautiful, and enhance, not distract, from the image. This is why the color photograph is art.