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YET ANOTHER VERY GOOD EXAMPLE OF WHY photographers, as a group, make up a horrible audience for seeing a photograph for what it is....
....yesterday on T.O.P., Mike Johnston brought his audience's attention to this photo essay on the New York Times site. And, with no intention of denying Johnston's right to an opinion, he accompanies the link to the photo essay (presented as example) with text which laments the "...the styles and fashions that are emerging as prevalent", re: "bad" digital-era BW practices.
To be fair, Johnston does recognize that the photographer's choice to present these pictures with "extremely dark, depressed tones" is "expressive interpretation" which is employed to support the idea of "the mood" which "is meant to be grim and threatened". However, for his retro-bw eye and sensibilities, it "goes too far" and "it's not expressive, just excessive."
Up to this point, Johnston is giving a pretty fair accounting of his opinion on the merits of the pictures as he would like to have seen them presented. (a very typical photographer comment, aka: "I would have..") But then, the photographer in him just has to also write that pictures "like this gives black and white a bad name." Really? You mean like, as an example, say....Robert Frank's BW pictures did back in the day?
Ok, fine. Written like a photographer looking at photographs. But, guess what? The overwheming number of people-who are not photographers-will look at these pictures for what they are .... pictures which either do or don't incite them to "feel" the dark (think metaphorically), menacing / threatening (literally) and uncertain times (what's happening here?) during which we are currently living. They simply won't give a rat's ass about classic BW conventions and whether or not they reflect badly on traditional BW photographic practices.
Rather, they are "just" pictures which are meant to tell a "story" and convey a mood. Pictures which are meant to convey the photographer's impression of what he "sees" rather than a straight-forward documentation of what he "sees". You know, kinda like what an artist might do.
FYI, to my eye and sensibilities, the first picture, The Office of the Medical Examiner’s temporary morgue in Manhattan, is, by far, the best life during wartime picture I yet seen.
And, BTW, IMo, these pictures, in no way, were meant to be viewed from the perspective of "photojournalistic objectivity". They have the photographer's subjectivity written all over them.