This link http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/mai...cidream117.xml is to a newspaper article about how older people (from the black and white TV generation) are far more likely to dream in black and white than younger folks (whose TV viewing has practically all been in colour) who are colour dreamers. Whilst this is interesting in itself, it prompted a related and more interesting question for me about b&w vs colour ... are those of us who are black and white photographers much more likely to be at least 55 or older – i.e. our formative childhood years were before the era of colour television? Amongst my own photography friends, this isn’t totally true – but there is a strong inclination in that direction.
In 1965 when I was sixteen I made my first ever trip abroad from the UK. I was lucky enough to go with my school on a visit across Europe to Russia. I can still remember vividly the shock I had when I woke up early in the morning in Moscow after travelling on the sleeper train to find that the whole place was in colour. Up to then, all I had ever seen of places abroad were TV pictures and newspaper pictures in monochrome, so to find it actually looked like it did at home (speaking here just about colour rather than anything else you understand!) was a shock. I relate this to illustrate how possibly seeing TV, cinema and newspapers images almost exclusively in black and white may well have conditioned the way I see and influenced my preference for monochrome image making?
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