Page 3 of 12 FirstFirst 12345 ... LastLast
Results 21 to 30 of 114

Thread: The New Color: The Return of Black-and-White

  1. #21

    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Location
    New York
    Posts
    2,673

    Re: The New Color: The Return of Black-and-White

    Quote Originally Posted by FocusMag View Post
    the old, 8 x 10 small black and white collectors have all but dissappeared.
    There are enough to support the thickest, slickest photography magazine that appears on my local newstand: http://www.bandwmag.com/backissues/index.html. It isn't the world's most adventurous magazine, but apparently people read it.

    The other day, I was showing some B&W photographs to a number of people under 30. Every one of them made a point of saying how much they like black and white as a medium.

    The premise of the Cotton article is that B&W left in the first place. Is that true, or is it just sky-is-falling stuff?

  2. #22
    Edwin Lachica's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2006
    Location
    Appenzell, Switzerland
    Posts
    52

    Re: The New Color: The Return of Black-and-White

    I've tried to digest Cotton's article bellow. After reading the article twice, I still could not wrap my head around what she was really trying to say. So I did what the old college way of trying to understand text, outline it and break the article into pieces. Hope it helps others to wade through the article.

    She is actually pretty much anti-fashion in a sense that she thinks current "contemporary-art photography" is conservative and rigid and its claims to a contemporary way of seeing as questionable.

    But her statements I think have to be qualified from the perspective of "contemporary art photgraphy" and not photography as a whole.

    BTW, for those who missed it, her article links to all the photographers she mentions including images etc.


    I. Introduction: Setting the Scene
    I. Early 2000s Researching for her book: (photography as contemporary art) and curating exhibits on the history of photgraphy
    A. The market for photography was setting and breaking new records
    1. Examples: Richard Prince’s untitle cowboy photograph (US$1.248 million) and Steichen’s Pond Moonlight (US$ 2.9)
    B. Photography has undergone a “face-lift” enabling it to sit alongside painting and the visual arts in international fairs and art center
    1. Large scale C prints mounted on plexi glass
    2. Extremely small edition numbers
    3. “Staged” photographs
    a) Every prop and gesture could be attributed to the artist’s direction
    b) N.B. Author views above with suspicion and views it a bastard form of photography
    (1) She was schooled in the magic of photography: willfull embrace of luck, mistakes and happenstance
    (2) She does not want to deride the “awe-inspiring handful of artists” who showed us that photography is a “supremely capable and elastic medium”
    (3) But the popularity of “staged” photos does not herald “understanding of photography’s broad creative terrain”
    C. Since the mid-1990s black and white photography (documentary photography / pseudo documentary photography) has lost popular interest
    1. Viewers are used to the “big , colorful spectacle of contemporary art photogrpaphy”
    2. 35mm work has not offered “style and production values required to sustain clear legibility”
    a) Truly great photographs by Stieglits, Evans, Weston Kertész and Cartier-Bresson (mostly LF and MF) are still very powerful within the cultural milieu
    b) Contemporary relevance for the current practitioner of black and white will be a hit and miss
    (1) Dominance of color in contemporary art photography
    (2) B&W as a historic and once-important art form
    (a) Last generation of B&W contemporary art photographers were from the 1950s
    (i) Arbus, Winogrand, Friedlander
    (b) Current students and younger artists tend to reference Cindy Sherman and the god-fathers of color photography
    (i) Eggleston, Shore
    (ii) with occasional referencing of proto-artist-using-photogrpahy
    (a) Man Ray, Ruscha
    (iii) Bernd & Hilla Becher are seen as unreapeatable but they demonstrate how (B&W)photography can be discipine and controlled
    (iv) It is telling what the current artist keep relevant nad in contemporary circulation
    D. The rise of digital technology
    1. Color is now predominantly hybridized
    2. Digital capture is making inroads into creative practice
    a) artists she has talked to see it as a viable option
    (1) good enough quality and long term cost effectiivity
    (2) she cites pragmatics and creativity as key ingredients in true art photography
    b) but creative exploration of digital photographic languages is held back by the “seductive grip of digirally sharpened and lushly enhance C prints
    (1) as they become the print by which to judge others
    (a) we forget the pleasure of an entirely analog print (analogous to forgetting the hiss of vinyl records)
    (b) the potential for other color languages are slow to emerge
    (1) the art-market is still suspicious of ink-jet prints
    (2) Digital C-Print dominance
    E. Thus the current career oriented photographer chooses a rather conservative path
    1. “Trying to be like” Eggleston, Shore & co.
    2. Sticking to large C-Prints
    3. Not departing from these standards.

    II. Black & White will provide photography’s long term positioning within the Art World

    A. Black & White is complex, messy, unfashionable and has a wide scope which are ingredients for cognizant, challenging photography
    1. Established darkroom trial and error loving photographers are stockpiling on film and paper
    2. Young practitioners are experimenting ironically transforming chromatic digital to monochrome
    3. B&W analog is still the key entry point to photography outside of the financially and technologically privileged families and high schools
    a) a cheap way to teach visual literacy in not so well off schools
    b) while techno-friendly time-rich amateur photgrapher crafts his black and white masterpieces by digital means an epson
    4. re-appearance of monochrome fashion photography
    5. monochrome work is seen as a reprieve from potential cultural extinction
    B. Looking and defining photographic practice in print
    1. Nostalgia in photography:
    a) Self-consciousness in the the act of looking at a photographic print
    (1) Taking pleasure in the physicality of a photographic print and its survival through time
    (a) Embracing the profoundness (auratic) of monochrome photography as a true shift away from the way we look at photographs in these digital times
    2. Photography is an act of making choices regarding methods and visions which “should not be defined by the fashionable, marketable production values of an era”
    a) Lipper’s Trip and Schoor’s Forest and Fields as revivals of photographic heritage at the same time making it fresh
    b) An-My Lê’s Small Wars series referencing rethoric and aesthetics of Roger Fenton and George Barnard
    c) Not as acts of rethinking history but offering creative in process solutions to the potential quagmire of the color manifestations of photography-as-contemporary-art
    d) Survey of Works
    (1) Osamu Kanemura
    (2) Jason Evans
    (3) Marketa Othova / Jasansky & Polak
    (4) Walead Beschty
    (5) Christopher Williams, James Welling, Shannon Ebner Michael Queenland
    e) Contemporary black and white photography and photographers as surveyed aboved present the true maverick character of photography at a time when current contemporary art photography’s “contemporary way” of seeing is questionable
    Last edited by Edwin Lachica; 10-Mar-2007 at 07:53. Reason: fixed formatting

  3. #23

    Join Date
    Nov 2006
    Location
    Plymouth, MA, USA
    Posts
    161

    Re: The New Color: The Return of Black-and-White

    Since most younger people were introduced to photography after B&W had been eclipsed by color in the popular market, perhaps there's a sense of nostalgia for the seeming simplicity and quaintness of images that evoke memories of the good olde days. I've noticed a lot of interest on photo forums in how to convert color images to B&W. Obviously, these folks are using their digital cameras and have no real interest in the traditional wet darkroom processes, but are fascinated by pictures that, for them, are different. Will the trend last? I doubt it. Like most such things, since it's based more on curiosity than a deeper motive, it will self-extinguish when the next "new" thing comes along.

    Conversely, for those whose experiences included their apprenticeship in the darkroom, B&W will continue to be a unique language for artistic expression.

  4. #24
    Eric Biggerstaff
    Join Date
    Apr 2005
    Location
    Denver, Colorado
    Posts
    1,327

    Re: The New Color: The Return of Black-and-White

    Hey Edwin,

    Thanks!

    Eric
    Eric Biggerstaff

    www.ericbiggerstaff.com

  5. #25
    Abuser of God's Sunlight
    Join Date
    Aug 2004
    Location
    brooklyn, nyc
    Posts
    5,796

    Re: The New Color: The Return of Black-and-White

    Quote Originally Posted by David A. Goldfarb View Post
    Comix, graphic novels, etc.
    These strike me as different media that happen to use drawing as a main ingredient ... not so much as examples of drawing pushing the frontiers (or even just getting trendy) in the plastic arts.

  6. #26
    Abuser of God's Sunlight
    Join Date
    Aug 2004
    Location
    brooklyn, nyc
    Posts
    5,796

    Re: The New Color: The Return of Black-and-White

    Quote Originally Posted by r.e. View Post
    What I don't get about this thread is why someone thinks that Ms. Cotton's essay is worth reading. I have read her piece twice now ...
    "Waiter! This meal is terrible! Bring me seconds!"

  7. #27
    Abuser of God's Sunlight
    Join Date
    Aug 2004
    Location
    brooklyn, nyc
    Posts
    5,796

    Re: The New Color: The Return of Black-and-White

    Brilliant summary, Edwin.

    It seems that Cotton's writing skills are a few notches below her thinking skills. Your digested version makes a lot more sense.

    Here's my re-digested version of your version:

    I. Black and white photography has been unfashionable and marginalized for a long time now.

    II. Some artists are finding ways to use it that breathe new life into it while still maintaining ties to the tradition.

    I think her points and her examples are pretty good; if she had hired someone like you as an editor, and found a way to speak her mind in a couple of un-auratic paragraphs, she'd be getting a lot less grief from the peanut gallery.

  8. #28

    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Location
    New York
    Posts
    2,673

    Re: The New Color: The Return of Black-and-White

    "Waiter! This meal is terrible! Bring me seconds!"

    Funny, but that is exactly what food and wine critics, and indeed other kinds of critics, do. It's about satisifying oneself that one's initial judgment, especially if negative, was either right or wrong. Being from Brooklyn, you may be familiar with New York Times critic Frank Bruni. He doesn't write restaurant reviews based on a single experience.

    I'm not going to say that this woman can't write without giving her a chance. After two chances, she reminds me of a first year university student with a pen in one hand, a thesaurus in the other and no clear idea of how to get from A to B, nor indeed what A and B are. It really shouldn't be necessary for someone like Edwin to have to take apart a 2000 word essay in detail to figure out what is being said. And if your digest is indeed the sum total of what she has to say, it ain't much.

    ...

    Doesn't the existence of newspapers, which are pervasive as a form of communication and which are chock full of black and white photographs, suggest that black and white as a medium is alive and well?

  9. #29
    Abuser of God's Sunlight
    Join Date
    Aug 2004
    Location
    brooklyn, nyc
    Posts
    5,796

    Re: The New Color: The Return of Black-and-White

    Quote Originally Posted by r.e. View Post
    Funny, but that is exactly what food and wine critics, and indeed other kinds of critics, do.
    i agree; i just thought your phrasing was funny.

  10. #30

    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Location
    New York
    Posts
    2,673

    Re: The New Color: The Return of Black-and-White

    Paul, cool.

    If I wanted to make a case that black and white has low acceptance as a medium, I think that I'd point to film and television. If those media are indicative, the public stopped accepting black and white, rather abruptly, forty to fifty years ago. In other words, this is very old news.

    On the other hand, when producers have made feature films in black and white in the last few decades, the films have sometimes been very successful; just to take some recent examples, Woody Allen's Match Point, Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby and George Clooney's Good Night and Good Luck. And these days, when a producer chooses to release a film in black and white, he is making a decision to do something that presents a lot of technical challenges relating to stock and processing. For example, if I recall correctly, Good Night and Good Luck was shot in colour and was desaturated in post production. Yet producers sometimes go with black and white despite the problems and despite the financial risk.

    Maybe the bottom line is the old adage that some subjects just work better in colour and some just work better in black and white.

Similar Threads

  1. The black & white transparency process and dr5 - who's used it/them?
    By John W. Randall in forum Darkroom: Film, Processing & Printing
    Replies: 61
    Last Post: 29-Jul-2015, 04:07
  2. So, IS black & white photography on its way out?
    By Erik Asgeirsson in forum Darkroom: Film, Processing & Printing
    Replies: 133
    Last Post: 12-Mar-2013, 11:58
  3. Photoshop with black and white
    By Eric Brody in forum Digital Processing
    Replies: 20
    Last Post: 31-Jan-2007, 02:04
  4. Going digital!
    By paul owen in forum Digital Hardware
    Replies: 15
    Last Post: 12-Sep-2004, 04:48
  5. Digital Black and White Printing Options
    By David Karp in forum Digital Hardware
    Replies: 17
    Last Post: 11-Aug-2004, 21:12

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •