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

[cosmicexplosion]

sounds like 'i wish i was suzan sontag' via pulling wool over the already shut eyes of her assumed readers.... maybe she is a word sculptor trapped in space...

[Richard M. Coda]

... but I get the impression that the university art history programs tend to churn out mental lemmings.

Vaughn

I love this phrase... mental lemmings.

[Jay DeFehr]

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, ....

[D. Bryant]

The 1% can still afford over-hyped work such as Hirst's. Large color sells to that group.
The more knowledgeable are looking to vintage prints - mostly B&W.

For those in the 99% who are still collecting, relatively smaller color prints are becoming like poster art - not worth much more than the cost of framing. For them, B&W retains value.

Care to support those statements with some cold hard facts? What you propose is just hyperbole.

Collectors paying $5K, $8K, $10K, $15K and beyond for large color prints are not uninformed or any less knowledgeable than those that purchase vintage B&W prints. And small color prints selling for $1200-$2000 are very collectible. We are talking sizes that range from about 5x7 to 10x5 INCHES!


And by the way do have a clear definition of what a vintage print is?

[Brian Ellis]

Notice that it's hard to understand what she's saying without first parsing each sentence and then thinking of the simple word or phrase that could have been used in place of the more obscure word or phrase that she actually uses. Which tells you that the essay isn't written for photographers. Its intended audience is faculty members of university art departments, museum curators, editors of art publications, art critics, other writers on art, etc., i.e. the "art establishment."

[Doug Howk]

D Bryant, as to what is a vintage print, see A.D.Coleman as to a definition.
As far as sales, existing in the hinterlands rather than NYC does encourage a distorted perspective; but if people are spending $1200 on a 5X7 color digital print, then I need to change technologies.

[D. Bryant]

D[on] Bryant, as to what is a vintage print, see A.D.Coleman

That's Coleman's definition, I was curious to know what you meant by vintage within the context of your post.

As far as sales, existing in the hinterlands rather than NYC does encourage a distorted perspective; but if people are spending $1200 on a 5X7 color digital print, then I need to change technologies.

NYC? Who's talking about New York? And I never specified digital color prints nor meant those exclusively though they could be included in that group.

My whole point was that the market and by implication collectors don't behave and purchase as you suggested.

[E. von Hoegh]

"Reveling in the auratic propensity of monochrome photographic thinking is perhaps not an unreconstructed Modernist impulse any longer..." ~ Charlotte Cotton

ummm... could somebody translate that into English for me?

Translation - "I'm spouting a load of pretentious rubbish because I really don't know sh!t from Shinola".

A b&w photo relies on composition, lighting, form, and texture. It takes time to learn to use these well, and time to learn to appreciate them. Not to mention the time to learn to print well.
Color can dazzle - just look at the supersaturated heavily processed/photoshopped prints that are selling , while a b&w print that actually posesses artistic merit languishes on the wall.

edit: Just look at the title of the article, "The new color..." what nonsense.

[Brian Ellis]

Actually, in my ignorance, I looked up "auratic" in the online Cambridge, Merriam-Webster's, Encarta, and American Heritage dictionaries. None had an entry...

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/auratic

That's as far as I went.

[Robert Hughes]

That's aurible spelling!