Black-and-white photography
In the age of disposable and digital cameras, online photo albums and scanned, color-printed, electronically enhanced photography, There are three simple words of salvation for the born-again photographer: black and white. There is something entirely missed in the activity of snapping a photo with a point and click mini autofocus camera, plucking out the film, dropping it off at the grocery store photo counter and, in a mere 60 minutes, finding your full-color, shiny print deposited in your hands.
Black-and-white photography, on the other hand, is the do-it-yourself kitchen grouting of the digital era. Grainy, smelling of hazardous chemicals that
irretrievably stain your clothes and fingernails, off-center, too bright or too dark, black-and-white photographs are a throwback to the golden age of photography when Ansel
Adams and Walker Evans discovered unknown corners of America, couples posed with their cars and technicolor was only available on dreamcoats. Shooting 18 rolls of film on your Disneyland vacation was inconceivable; photos were mementos: artistic, marred by human error and difficult to obtain. In the era of instant photography, the mystery of black-and-white images lives on to those who are patient and self-sacrificing enough to learn how to make them.
The trappings of the darkroom are so base, so pure, they return the amateur photographer to a time when life was simple and not so full of computers. Imagine the delight that crafty Scotsman felt when he
spotted the gentle curves of Nessie
lounging in the Loch Ness, or how overjoyed the backroom astronomers were as the outlines of an alien
face appeared on the dusty surface of the Mars, or the satisfaction Greg Brady felt when he saw that the football player's foot was inside the line in the background of his groovy cheerleader photograph.
There really is nothing more satisfying than standing in a room faintly lit by a devilish red light, watching as a piece of shiny paper that only seconds
before was void of all light and shadow slowly reveals the subtle black, white and grays of an image, drawn out by chemicals as it waves back and forth in the
developing tray. As the Virgin Mary appears in the folds of an oriental rug, so too does the black-and-white photograph appear from virtual nothingness to
the delight of the darkroom pilgrim.
This is the sense of accomplishment — of scientific progress even — experienced in the darkroom as prints appear like mirages, where the photographer feels a
God-like power: burning and dodging, combining images, changing a sunny day to the dark of night. Black-and-white photography is to color photography what the bicycle is to the electric scooter: more, better and much less silly-looking.
— Sara J. Brenneis (sara at flakmag dot com)
