capturemag.com.autools b&w revival
[capture] sep_oct.19came to black and white purely out of preference and a desire for
distinctiveness, which is linked to his decision to shoot as much as
possible with film. “Once, everybody shot with a certain camera and a
certain film and processed in a certain way, so you created your own
style and look that only you did, whether in black and white or colour.
I can remember, as a young assistant in London, I’d be on a double-
decker bus, I’d see a billboard and I’d know who did the picture purely
by the way it had been shot. Only the photographer, his assistant, and
the lab knew how each photographer did what they did.” But these
days, he adds, when someone sees an image they like, they can push a
few buttons and get the same thing. “It means that photography has
become bland. Everything’s shot in digital. There’s no individuality –
maybe in the style or way they shoot, but not in the look. And if
someone does do something that’s different, all of a sudden you have
fifteen people copying it. They think, ‘He’s working, I’ll do that’.” Other
than tintype, Cook’s number one preference is his “little Leica” with
black and white film in it. “And if I can, I go and print it myself.”
Sydney-based advertising specialist, Christopher Ireland shoots
with black-and-white film simply because he thinks it is the most
beautiful and elemental form of photography. “It is the Vivaldi Four
Seasons of photography,” he says. “We get into photography because we
get hooked on the magic of it. Seeing an image slowly reveal itself from
the developing bath is almost spiritual. Digital photography is practical,
but it doesn’t resonate with me and cross the ages the way black-and-
white film does.”
For Ireland, the beauty of black and white is that it can be classical
and straightforward. “I love the lack of choices my own personal
workflow adopts – a Leica mechanical camera, Tri-X and Ilford ID-11.
Or, if I’m feeling particularly expressive or feel the image has greater
power, the Horseman 4x5 field camera with Ilford HP5 and Rodinal.
I process everything in our laundry.” He adds, “What’s in it for me? It
slows me down. It gives me a physical medium to work with. It inspires
me. It connects me to the lineage of wonderful photographers who
have gone before. It also leaves a family legacy, because I mainly shoot
the immediate family and I convey my love to them through the
emotional images we create together.”
Melissa Breyer, a street photographer based in New York,
appreciates its aesthetics. “There is a certain purity and elegance to
black and white. Colour screams for attention and can sometimes steal
the show, while black and white sits more quietly and lets the content
and composition do the work. Sometimes I succumb to the lure of
colour, but black and white just feels right on an intuitive, aesthetic
level,” she says.
For Sydney-based photojournalist, Paul Blackmore, it’s the visual
clarity of black and white photography unencumbered by the
distraction of colour. “The emotional and artistic vision of the
photography doesn’t have to compete with the visual demands of
colour. For me, there is a beautiful aesthetic harmony of tone, purpose,
and light,” he says. “There is also an unexplained resonance people
have with black and white that is a bit like our response to music.”
Valentina Piccinni and Jean-Marc Caimi, the photographer duo
known as Caimi & Piccinni, suggest, “Maybe it has something to do
with some primordial code of decrypting and interpreting the reality,
stripping it to its essential dualistic traits, light-shade, day-night,
happiness-fear, comfort-danger. Many people shoot in black and white
when deciding to become photographers.” They note, “black and white
opens up a world of different creative approaches. Like a chess game,
the black-and-white process poses endless questions, leading to infinite
possibilities and aesthetic outcomes. To us, it represented a journey
into image-creation awareness and artistic growth, yielding to a
photographic personal vision, our peculiar approach to image-making.”
Best known for his ocean photography, Trent Mitchell adds,
“I’ve only been asked once to shoot black-and-white film for a
commission. It was ten rolls of film, and a long time ago.” But he shot
his recent personal project, an underwater portrait series called Inner
Atlas, in black and white. The reason, he says, “has more to do with
colour theory than anything else. I was creating these images in the
surf zone and the palette was dominantly blue. Blue just didn’t bring
the intensity and abstract quality to the series that I wished for. Colour
almost seemed too beautiful and literal for me. Inner Atlas is an
abstract study of human form, energy, movement, and expression.
©^ T All of these things don’t need colour to be represented in an image.”RENTM
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