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[capture] sep_oct.19Super powers
The advantage of black and white, Mitchell believes is, “Using the
medium to strip things back to the essentials. This helps you refine
what you’re trying to say, visually and conceptually. Also, not having to
worry about colour when creating a cohesive body of work is a benefit
too. The simplicity and limitations of black and white open up another
way to see the world. It also has an undeniable timeless quality about
it. The allure is definitely an emotional one for me.” Breyer’s reward is
its simplicity. “Especially in a chaotic urban environment,” she states,
“which is where I do the bulk of my work, black and white helps to
streamline the mayhem. It calms the environment down. By soothing
the visual cacophony, the subjects have less competition and can play a
larger role.” Breyer adds, “There is also a certain timelessness to it. One
knows that a colour photo is of a certain age, but black and white can
be a bit more ambiguous.”
The emotional power of black and white draws Ireland also. “If, like me,
you love soft light sources such as the magic light that permeates a room via
a window, black and white will reward you. By taking away colour, we focus
more on the emotional quality of an image. There’s more room to feel
something because there’s less to distract the mind.” It draws viewers into
things like the facial expression in a portrait, or a unique component of the
scene, he states. Mitchell also appreciates its timelessness. “Colour can so
easily tie an image to an era, and black and white takes some of this away
and becomes more transcendent of time and place.”
For Caimi & Piccinni, black and white allows them to achieve an
intimacy not available with colour. “When we did the first chapter of
our ‘cities in transition so-far’ trilogy (Naples, Rome, and Istanbul), we
decided to shoot black-and-white film only using simple point and shoot
cameras. We found a small student’s flat in Forcella, Naples, in an old
and Mafia-ridden neighbourhood, moved there, and set up a darkroom
in the bathroom. We wanted to get under the skin of Forcella and other
similar areas of the city, meet people, and get into their private lives as
well as exposing ours in the process. The visceral nature of black and
white and the unobtrusiveness of the small film cameras matched this
aim. The neighbourhood noises, smells, and dust were all around,
penetrating the film from the moment of the shutter release, to the
developing process. The advantages of using black and white for some
works are linked to a whole emotional panorama. We probably think,
see, feel, and act differently when we shoot in black and white. To us,
this is much more important than the mere aesthetic connected to it.”
While there may not yet be a black and white revival in advertising
photography – although a number of recent ad films by Nike, Apple, and
Body Armor, suggest that there is a growing interest – black and whiteLEFT: Inner
Atlas, Jack
MacRae 2019.
ABOVE LEFT:
Nya.
ABOVE: An
American actress
who moved
to Rome from
California to
give birth to her
first baby. She
wanted her son
to somehow
belong to Rome.
From the book,
RHOME.Once, everybody shot with a certain
camera and a certain film...
Adrian Cook©^
ADRI
ANCOOK©^
CAIMI^ &PICCIN
NI