This post will probably end up sort of random and rather winding, as it is sort of a free form thought process that I have been internally and increasingly engaged in lately. It’s a sort of experiment to get things out of my head in hopes of clarity, and definitely not meant to land on either side of the issue. That is a sort of warning or disclaimer I suppose. In some ways I have felt like abandoning all work done in color. This is a seed that has planted itself and been blooming for well over a year now. There are a multitude of reasons and influences to this. In some ways I think it is a further rejection of life in Southern California, or perhaps more accurately an extension of personal growth inherent in life transitions out of there and back east into urban environments. Environment is influential after all. The architecture of these older northern cities is different. There is a lack of color in them, or at least in how I choose to remember them. This memory aspect is an important point and is possibly not transferable to others. Additionally it is winter now. Snow blankets the ground and leaves are absent from the trees. The sky is often grey. The whole world around me does not exhibit much color. In that case why bother with even displaying color? In November Fresh Air aired an interview with the cinematographer Gordon Willis, who worked on the Godfather films and some Woody Allen films. His comments interested me. Excerpts:
I’ve watched some movies lately that have also inspired this thinking with their beauty.
Screen Grab from Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura
Screen Grab from Michelangelo Antonioni’s La Notte
Screen Grab from Anton Corbijn’s Control
Screen Grab from Anton Corbijn’s Control
Screen Grab from Coen Brothers’ The Man Who Wasn’t There
Screen Grab from Coen Brothers’ The Man Who Wasn’t There
Around 2002 I was spending a significant amount of time with a friend who had just moved to the states from Germany and I remember telling him that when I imagined Germany it existed in black and white. I’m not sure where exactly that came from. I’ll posit that an education during the cold war had some influence on this as those countries were painted to be drab places one would never want to experience. The enemy has to inhabit a dismal and drab place after all, and like it nonetheless, lest the citizenry feel some form of compassion for them. I think more so it probably came from the fact that my greatest experience with Germany came from text books and images of the war, which were in black and white, so the only way I knew to picture Germany in my mind was in black and white. This is curious to me though as an indication of the influence of photography. Black and white adds a sense of timelessness. Color fads of the time are erased. Photographs from the 70’s and 80’s are more readily dateable based on color trends, some of which is lent by the way film stocks of the day rendered color. Sure styles of the times might still be present in black and white but with the absence of color they might whisper rather than scream. This no doubt made it easier for me to project images that showed a time over half a century ago into the future and represent, in my mind, the way Germany is. Additionally, I wonder if this doesn’t also have some influence on Gordon Willis when he comments that New York is “kind of a black and white city”. Or is it just the influence of the environment?
Going back further in time to the Great Depression and work done by the FSA, I have no doubt that some of the images, if not presented with captions, could still be created in parts of America today.
photo: Allie Mae Burroughs, ©Walker Evans
photo: Floyd Burroughs, ©Walker Evans
Certainly these images don’t show much in the form of styles to really give them dates and so does that mean that had they been produced digitally in color you could question their time frame any less? I ponder this myself. More interestingly though, does the fact that they are in black and white give them added weight and comparably increased longevity? In searching for an answer to this I remember an interesting response I read from Peter Lindbergh when asked what black and white gives him that color does not.
“Reality is in color. Black and white photography is an interpretation of reality. What interests me most in my work is charisma. I have noticed when comparing color proofs with black and white proofs that the charisma of a person is expressed more clearly in a black and white image. No doubt that is because the black and white image already constitutes an interpretation and not a true representation.”
photo: ©Peter Lindbergh
photo: ©Peter Lindbergh
photo: ©Peter Lindbergh
photo: ©Peter Lindbergh
photo: ©Peter Lindbergh
There is an element of mystery to black and white images and it can lend a haunting affect, both of which I am interested in investigating in my work. In the right hands though I suppose color can have similar affects. David LaChapelle is famous for exploiting color.
photo: ©David LaChapelle for Flaunt Magazine
photo: ©David LaChapelle for Vogue Italia
Though it does have a mysterious affect it is a bit too warm in mood for my tastes. Perhaps mysterious isn’t the right term. Dreamy might be more accurate. Regardless it is not representative of reality and also not particularly how I would remember the world should I be cut off from it visually. I have always been a fan of Miles Aldridge’s work. He relies on color greatly and the images are darker in tone, more to my liking and view of the world.
photo: ©Miles Aldridge for L’uomo Vogue
photo: ©Miles Aldridge for Vogue Italia
photo: ©Miles Aldridge for Vogue Italia
What I ask myself though is do they provide the same “charisma” of the individual that Peter Lindbergh was talking about? Perhaps the purpose is different. Every person and every photographer is looking for something different in what they like, what speaks to them, and what they create. I’m not attempting to discount one or the other but just searching for where I am at this point in time.
This whole thought process has been happening and this whole post was generated because I had felt I was at a tipping point. Then I picked up the new Time Magazine and there were images shot by Peter Hapak whose work I also really like. I was thereby sent blazing down a trail of second-guessing.
photo: ©Peter Hapak for Time Magazine
photo: ©Peter Hapak for Time Magazine
The use of color here is subtle and almost unnoticeable. There are tropes here that I certainly brush against in my own work and would also like to investigate further. Do the subjects have “charisma”? Does color matter here, by which I mean would they be more or less powerful in black and white? Will any of these images be timeless? What if the FSA photographs were treated like this? Would they still be interesting? Lasting? Is this color technique (which I love) a fad that will date the images? I mean, does anyone care about the cross processed images of over a decade ago? Is this just a digital outgrowth, subtle as it may be, of that cross processing? What if the FSA photographers had run around cross processing the images? Or the World War II photographers? Would the value of those images still hold? Could black and white itself, at this point in history, just be a fad that comes and goes in popularity?
Everyone listed here has worked in both genres so I don’t mean to imply that one would work in only one manner. These are just musings of the moment during a snowy Saturday in the winter of 2010. And surely either one serves it’s purpose as a tool to be worked with. I suppose it only matters that I listen to my gut, to what the environment is telling me, and dive into the rabbit hole. To that end I suppose the world makes more sense in black and white right now, and that doesn’t have to be absolute. Anyone with anything valuable to say on anything even remotely related to anything I’ve said here please weigh in.
