or not?

[Tin Can]

I use the Bing daily image as my PC desktop image. Every morning I am confronted by a different, amazing, extremely vivid color image. They are interesting, but so unreal and compared to the abstactivenesss of B&W they exceed the Zeitgeist. Most I doubt could be printed well, and are best viewed only a very good monitor.

That brings up monitors and state of the art TV's. 4K is here, not common, but it will be. Then 8k and so on, ad nauseum.

Quality B&W prints will be become rarer, and perhaps more desirable in the coming decades.

[Mark Barendt]

Why do you even reference color?

I'm not trying to suggest exact words here just trying to help you reflect and clarify what it seems you want to say. Part of that is trying to eliminate the "technical argument". Your original statement asserts an absolute "that abstractions are always more profound". Absolutes beg for rebuttals, you are throwing down a gauntlet.

B&W is inherently an abstraction and I find that that abstraction makes my photos intrinsically more profound.

[Merg Ross]

I'll take the easy road, and quote a photographer who worked in both color and black & white:

" The prejudice many photographers have against color photography comes from not thinking of color as form. You can say things with color that can't be said in black-and-white. But those who say that color will eventually replace black-and-white are talking nonsense. The two do not compete with each other. They are different means to different ends".

I know, Kirk, this is not an answer to your question, but I couldn't resist!

Oh, the quote. EW, 1953

[Oren Grad]

Kirk, thinking about it a bit more, I'll pick on another aspect of your initial statement. I actually don't think B&W photography is any more or less an abstraction than color is - all photographs are quite a ways removed from that which was photographed. But on an intuitive level, B&W pictures feel more real to me, more like a window on to the world. Again, I don't mean that as a piece of mystical philosophizing or a statement of artistic merit, just a description of my subjective reaction to photographs. I think it relates to what I mentioned before, about how removing the distraction of color makes it easier to pay attention to certain other attributes.

In making and looking at color pictures, I sometimes wonder whether my reaction is at all related to the "uncanny valley" phenomenon. But that raises tricky questions of just what makes something "realistic", and I haven't been able to sort that out yet.

[Ken Lee]

I absolutely feel the validity of this statement, but how would you defend it in a crowd of serious color photographers?

I'd say that color photographers work in a slightly more realistic medium, so it's slightly harder for them. Not impossible, just harder.

When trying to work in color I have been invariably forced to compensate by increasing the sense of abstraction through other means - in order to reach balance - by for example making the design very simple, or the perspective very flat, or the color pallet very restricted, or the sense of detail very low. See here or here.

As an image gets too realistic, it becomes easier for the viewer to look through the photograph, at the subject. When it gets too abstract, the danger is that the viewer sees only the photograph. With Fine Art photography, we want to meet the viewer half-way, not at either extreme.

[Kirk Gittings]

Ken, I think that last statement is better expressed as I rather than WE as there is no consensus as to what is Fine Art Photography and images at both extremes are commonly sold in galleries and hung in museums as Fine Art Photography. IE from the most straight forward Alec Soth to the most abstract Aaron Siskind, Minor White or Brett Weston.

[Ken Lee]

You're right - Excellent

[Kirk Gittings]

Kirk, thinking about it a bit more, I'll pick on another aspect of your initial statement. I actually don't think B&W photography is any more or less an abstraction than color is - all photographs are quite a ways removed from that which was photographed. But on an intuitive level, B&W pictures feel more real to me, more like a window on to the world. Again, I don't mean that as a piece of mystical philosophizing or a statement of artistic merit, just a description of my subjective reaction to photographs. I think it relates to what I mentioned before, about how removing the distraction of color makes it easier to pay attention to certain other attributes.

In making and looking at color pictures, I sometimes wonder whether my reaction is at all related to the "uncanny valley" phenomenon. But that raises tricky questions of just what makes something "realistic", and I haven't been able to sort that out yet.

Oren I don't know how old you are, But I would suggest that people who grew up in the time when newspaper photographs were all B&W (like me) would see B&W as more real? Going to UNM in the late 60's when I was 18-19 stripped that idea from me real quick. Newhall and Coke loved to show how plastic a media photography is. But that is not a common experience for people my age (62).

[Jac@stafford.net]

i would suggest that people who grew up in the time when newspaper photographs were all B&W (like me) would see B&W as more real?.

Speaking only for myself, B&W was my only reality because during my career it was almost all that newspapers printed. Heck, i did not have a color TV until I was in my thirties. Nonetheless, I tried to make the very most of its particular nature.

So B&W was always abstractive (to invent a usage).

However I think most viewers, not photographers, saw B&W as a casual normal, not abstract. Today, thanks to digital's liberation of color, the normal is color and B&W is more likely abstract.

[Tin Can]

Your abstractive is better usage than my abstractivenesss, where I used too many s'.

Speaking only for myself, B&W was my only reality because during my career it was almost all that newspapers printed. Heck, i did not have a color TV until I was in my thirties. Nonetheless, I tried to make the very most of its particular nature. When doing magazine work on color I admit all I really worried about was getting the color right, balanced.

So B&W was always abstractive (to invent a usage).