[Leica] Re: Colo(u)r vs. B/W

[Donal Philby <donalphilby@earthlink.net>]

> BD wrote:
> Rob- As has been said here more than once, with black and white you see the
> subject; with color you see the subject's clothing.

Robert Appleby and Susan Darlow wrote:
> BD, this sounds to me like the kind of cliché that bars the door to
> actually seeing. It's very neatly put and therefore sounds definitive. I
> think that you see (both when taking pictures and when looking at them)
> what you are open to see, and if you think and work in colour then your
> results (in any area of photography) can be as rich and unsuperficial as
> any B+W.
> However, your answer does exemplify the cultural bias in favour of B+W as somehow
> telling the truth while colour is solely decorative. And this is a bit
> unfortunate for those of us who genuinely see even "serious" subjects in
> colour.

This is food for endless banquet debate.  It is a very alive issue.  I
have numerous times had clients tell me, "I just love BW, but we need to
do this in color or people will think we are cheap."  A telling
comment.  Interestingly, I charge more for shooting BW--partly because
it is more time consuming logistically.  99% of my assignment shooting
is color.  To shoot BW is blessed relief both technically and because I
see many more things to shoot that are not burdened by the non-essential
color.  

But beyond all that BW comes off to me as symbolic, timeless and color
comes off as about an event that happened at 9:32 yesterday morning.

At the large Salgado exhibit of Workers here in La Jolla was a smaller
exhibit of color photos (actually backlit Duratrans) shot by someone
else (french?) of the same gold mine in Brazil with the mud coated men
swarming around the open pit.   The experience of seeing both confirmed
my historical  versus symbolic feelings.  

The other side of the issue is this:  when I asked agent who represents
my magazine work about shooting more BW he replied:  "why eliminate 90%
of the market for your work and why guarantee little of it will be seen,
accept, perhaps, in galleries?"

So there is more to the debate than aesthetics, unfortunately.

donal 
__________
Donal Philby
San Diego
www.donalphilby.com