[Leica] There is more to light than how bright it is...

[timatherton at theedge.ca (Tim Atherton)]

> Yes, it's true that had color film been invented first, we would
> probably not have monochrome film - or if we had it, it would simply be
> a novelty. But that's irrelevant, because black and white film was
> invented first, and black and white iconic images are what we ultimately
> judge all photography against.
>
> Certainly there are some subjects that are inherently "color" subjects.
> But there are many, many that are not. Imagine Salgado's work in
> color...Imagine Eugene Smith's...

Recently I've been feeling my understanding of b&w and colour in photography
to be somewhat unsatisfactory and superficial - based as it was one the
clothes/soul analogy.

I read a wonderful little book called "Chromophobia" about the fear of
colour in the history/practice of art and it certainly got me thinking

It has caused me to examine much more about how I work (or can work) in
colour.

The basic thesis is that in western art there has been a prejudice towards
and fear of colour. He follows a historic thread through on this. The
Soul/Cloths statement is in a direct line that goes back to Plato's
prejudices on this. The primacy of line and form over colour, colour being
"merely" cosmetic or surface. The child who is told in Kindergarten they
must "colour in between the lines" (interestingly my wife's mother - who was
an artist in her own right, banned colour in the lines colouring books from
the home when she was growing up...), the hierarchies of colours in art text
books and colour theory in art education over the last 150+ years, How the
human, earthy colours of Rembrandt are much more acceptable than the gaudy,
sensual, tempting colours of the East, Corbusiers "banishment" of colour
after an experience at the Parthenon (having been seduced by colour in the
Orient) and more - and how in much art (and certainly in photography) there
is what amounts to a fear of colour - which is best kept under control of
line and form (or better still, black and white) - what the author describes
as a fear of corruption or contamination through colour - which lurks within
much Western cultural thought and art. This is apparent in the many and
varied attempts to purge colour, either by making it the property of some
'foreign body' - the oriental, the feminine, the infantile, the vulgar, or
the pathological - or by relegating it to the realm of the superficial, the
supplementary, the inessential, or the cosmetic (clothes as opposed to
soul)"

He then goes on to look at how colour is in fact possibly more substantial,
fundamental and essential, indeed elemental - and in some ways much harder
to understand and work with.

As I say, it's a small book, but certainly set me thinking

tim