Between 1968 and 1976 I photographed mostly in black and white because that’s what I could afford. Black and white photography can be more challenging than color since the impact of the image depends wholly on its composition and tonality. But I think this “limitation” also creates a more direct emotional connection between the image and the viewer.
So, I’m experimenting with B & W versions of color images I shot during 2016. Leave a comment and let me know what you think.
I think B&W, because it is associated with old photos immediately lends a kind of historicity to any such photo, which generally, but not always, also gives it a dignity that it might not otherwise have. Its artificiality relative to the verisimiltude of color photos also gives it the cachet of art quite readily. I think also the landscape photos here recall the iconic photos of Ansel Adams, again touching back to an earlier era, especially for those of us , I suppose old enough to recall the near-ubiquity of Adams’s images in our culture and so we can’t not see echoes of Adams’s work in such pictures.
Which is a very nice way of stating the fact that we’re old, Andy! I’m not consciously thinking about Adams, much less his zone system, when converting color images to B&W, but I take your point.