This past week, I have been thinking about the relationship between color and black and white photography. In many ways, black and white photographs have defined the past for us. From the Civil War through the 1950s, black and white was the "color" of history. For example, our visual experience of World War II is mostly based on black and white photography so that color photos like these taken during the London blitz seem a little strange.
The black and white photo above was taken in 2010 on a rainy Sunday afternoon with my Pentax MX camera loaded with Fuji Neopan Acros 100 film.
@010 you say? This one has no "time stamp" and I like that. It looks to be 20, 30 or 50 years old. Even the bicycle is of an old style.Is that someone in the window on the left?
ReplyDeleteRobert--that's the thing about black and white photographs. Would you think that this photo has no "time stamp" if it were in color? Granted there are no visual cues that would date this to 2010, but I still wonder how the sense of time is affected by the choice of black and white. Be interested in what you think.
ReplyDeleteI don't think there was anyone around the day I took this picture, but there were dolls propped up in the windows, looking out.
Color photography became popular and common in the 1960's as it was widely available and relatively inexpensive and more importantly I think, was the advent of the film cartridge with (the 126? format) and small no focus cameras.Before that people had 120 folders that required some skill to operate. So if this photo were in color that had that faded look or Kodachrome contrast it could be 40 or 50 years old. That being said I tend to convert most of my digital images ,and even some color film photos b&w ! I just prefer it for the simplicity and more graphic nature. Great topic Edd, thanks for stimulating my brain so early in the day!
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