[Leica] Street photography in B&W?

[Jayanand Govindaraj]

Ric,
I agree with you 100%.

The point I was trying to make is that the frequently implied notion that
B&W is "Art" and "The Real Thing", and that colour is an inferior medium,
is, to my mind, completely irrelevant today. Most of the early masters shot
B&W because that is all they had access to, not because it was a conscious
artistic choice, and by the time widespread colour film of reasonable
quality was available, they were too set in their ways to take full
advantage of the new medium, not unlike the extreme reluctance of many
photographers to switch from film to digital in the early days of digital.
In other words, IMHO, there is a heavy dose of artistic propaganda and
conditioning here in the repeatedly stated fact of the so called
"supremacy" of B&W as an artistic medium. Starting with Ernst Haas and Saul
Leiter in the 1950s and 1960s, there is enough of a body of excellent
street photography in colour - one needs only to look at, say, Raghubir
Singh's body of work on the streets of India, or Constantine Manos' recent
book on the USA to understand what I mean. Similarly, I can see the soul of
a subject just as easily in Steve McCurry's hypnotic colour portraits as in
Jane Bown's equally hypnotic monochromatic ones.

I do both, and I enjoy doing both, but colour is my basic medium, and B&W
is an ancillary medium. By the way, colour is not easy - I spend more time
post processing my colour photographs than I do my B&W ones.  When I cannot
get the colour right, I convert to B&W - to me that is an easy option!

This is not to belittle anybody, or any other opinion, but I have just
stated what MY views are on this subject.

Cheers
Jayanand



On Sat, Nov 8, 2014 at 10:22 AM, RicCarter <ric at cartersxrd.net> wrote:

> I have finally reached this conclusion:
>
> There is no more bullshit photographic question than "Which is more
> [insert whatever term you like here], black & white or color?"
>
> Very quickly, it descends into "Real photographers shoot black & white,"
> which I have now come to regard as a personal insult.
>
> Each of us has our own preferences. None of them is founded in anything
> other than opinion and personal taste.
>
> I'll do a little self examination to investigate if I do color because it
> is "easy."
>
> Jay, who himself asked the original question, is an excellent street
> shooter and uses mostly color. The world is full of excellent color street
> photography. Is B&W the "fashion" of the field is a different question.
>
> You trying to stir up something, Jay? ;^)
>
> Sorry to be grumpy. I'll now try to go back to remaining quiet when color
> or black & white questions arise here.
>
> Ric Carter
> www.CartersXRd.net
> http://www.facebook.com/ric.carter
>
> “When you don’t shoot color, you don’t have to worry about color.” — Jay
> Hunter
>
>
>