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YESTERDAY, AS I WAS PERUSING A BOOK OF PICTURES MADE BY John Szarkowski-aptly titled, John Szarkowski ~ Photographs-I was struck by the manner in which Szarkowski’s pictures exhibited a rather exqisuite sense of form. A quality which I have rarely felt when viewing bw pictures.
However, that written, I must admit that I have had Szarkowski’s book for 10 years or more, viewed it a number of times since acquiring it and, truth be told, I was not very aware of the sense of form that seems so obvious to me now. I attribute that fact to the other fact, re: Szarkowski’s pictures, which is that I have always liked them cuz they are “quiet”, exquisitely rendered observations of ordinary life. Which is another way of writing that I was seduced and side-tracked by the referents in his pictures.
Shame on me.
In any event, I got to wonderin’ if some of my pictures, made with much awareness of color as an element of the form that I seek to create, could “work” in bw. So, I set about selecting a few pictures and converted them to bw. I even made a couple of large-ish prints-16”x16” / 16”x21”-in order to see how they looked off-screen.
When all was said and done, my conclusion was that some of my pictures “work,” as bw pictures some don’t. I also came to the conclusion that in some pictures, inasmuch as most bw pictures are “abstract” pictures, form is sometimes very apparent due to the fact that a viewer is not”distracted” by color. Lines, shapes, tones and the like seem to assume a very definitive and obvious visual identity as such.
The unexpected result of this monkeyin’ around is that one can, with the use of a high quality inkjet printer with multiple black inks, make some damn nice bw prints. So, I will be making some bw prints for display on the walls of my house. A practice that I have not engaged in for many decades.
In any event, the idea of comparing a color original to its “converted” bw cousin is a fools errand. Each manner of expression has its own visual signature which incites in a viewer a different visual experience.
FYI, re: Szarkowski’s pictures, his images meet my expectations, re: for considering a picture to be a very good picture (dare I write, a Fine Art picture):
“…an image exists simultaneously as a continuous visual plane on which every space and object are interlocking pieces of a carefully constructed jig-saw puzzle and a window through which the viewer can discern navigable space and recognizable subject manner.” ~ Sally Eauclaire
Or, as I have often written, a picture which illustrates and illuminates.