No conclusion - at any rate, not yet.
No conclusion - at any rate, not yet.
Yes that was practically what HCB said in the interviews that the absence of colors allows him to concentrate more on composition and forms and geometry without the added complexity of colour
If he started with color, he wouldn't be saying that. He may never had shot BW. Who knows? Photography started with BW so its been around. It;s simpler to do on your own especailly chemically. If color started first, and was easier to develop and print then BW, BW would be as popular as pinhole photography.
the absence of colors allows him to concentrate more on composition and forms and geometry without the added complexity of colour
color in painting is a tool for transformation while in photography just a reality check
There would be little or no BW photography if color film were developed first.
How can anyone who's seen a sunset or a rose be opposed to color?
Maybe I’m afraid to confront the problem of color.
There would be little or no BW photography if color film were developed first.
Voila here is his full opinion on color:
With only rare exceptions, you have never published color
photographs. . . .
"Color, for me, remains painting’s domain. I photographed China
and the Seine in color for Paris Match, Life, and Stern, and
France for [publisher] Robert Laffont. It was because of professional
necessity: not a compromise, but a concession. My only good color
photograph was published on the cover of Camera, when I exhibited
at the Pavillon de Marsan [part of the Louvre] in 1955, but it had
no meaning—I had fallen into aestheticism. The [audio-] engineer
[Stefan] Kudelski29 is the only one who has given me an interesting
point of view on this. He explained that color allows for quicker
identification of a document. But this is another debate. I find
emotion in black-and-white: it transposes, it is an abstraction, it is not
“normal.” Reality is a chaotic flood and, within that reality, you have
to make choices that bring together meaning and form in a balanced
manner—so if you have to worry about color on top of that . . . ! Plus,
“natural” colors don’t mean anything. With its asexual vision, color
delights only salesmen and magazines.
In fact, I have a passion for color. But to use the palette, I need
my ass kicked. Maybe I’m afraid to confront the problem of
color. In photography, color is based on an elementary prism. For
the time being it can’t be any different because they have not
discovered the chemical processes that would allow the extreme
complexity of the process of decomposing and recomposing
color. Think that with pastel, for instance, there is a range of 375
shades of green! In photography, color remains a very important
tool for information. Nevertheless, it remains limited in terms of
reproduction. It remains chemical, not transcendental as it is in
painting.
Photography, the way I like it, is black-and-white,
because it transposes things. It has an abstract quality and an
extremely strong emotional power. Of course there is color, but that’s
not my world at all. [ . . . ] It always flatters a bit, but it does not
possess the abstract strength of black-and-white. And I think that
the problems with color that occur if you have a painter’s eye can
never be dealt with in photography. [ . . . ] I would say that color
in its transparency—in other words, when it’s projected—is like
a stained-glass window, and it can be very interesting and very
pleasing. It can be very pleasing when you project it because light
goes through it as it does with stained glass, but after that, when
you get to the inks, to the printing, you have no control. And one
color in itself is never beautiful. It functions through relationships;
nothing exists by itself. A beautiful red exists in relation to a brown
or a white. These are relationships. Warm colors, cold colors. There
are laws inherent to color, to physics. It is not my field, but these
are essential things. You have to read the books written by painters.
André Lhote writes about it at length in his Traité du paysage et
de la figure (Treatise on landscape and fgure painting).
Anyway,
the color problems of a painter are not any different from those a
photographer encounters. But in cinema or studio photography, it is
completely different from our concept of photography—that is, of
things shot from life—because the directors can compose their colors
in the studio, as the milliner composes a hat. It is their problem.
But in photography shot from life, from reality, that’s very difficult
because the eye chooses what attracts it. For instance, we could see
a pleasing relationship between colors, but as we work at 1/125th of
a second, the eye has ignored things that the camera records. And
now the print displays a green that clashes awfully with this red.
And everything is in there, so you can’t do anything about it. And
it is about commerce again! There are magazines that specialize in
color because they think that it will sell. If they found a gimmick to
make paper smell as well they would do it. They must sell, sell at
all cost. These are money problems, and a neurosis that comes from
money problems; it is a neurotic world. . . . What were we saying
about color? It went out of my head."
That has absolutely nothing to do with, and historically wrong.
Balck and white photography came first — around 200 years ago these days —, but as far as photographic film is concerned, experiments in color photography started in the early 20th century, a decade or two after black and white photographic film was introduced.
Note that there were experiments in color photography as early as the 1860s, and that results of additive color processes such as Autochrome were available in the late 1910s. Early color photographs printed in National Geographic in the 1920s were based on Autochrome glass plates.
The production of 35mm black and white and color film is even closer: Oskar Barnack adapted 35mm cine film for his new Leica camera in the mid-20s, Kodak came up with the 35mm film cassette early 30s, kodachrome was invented in 1935, Agfacolor around the same time. Cartier-Bresson bought his first Leica in 1931: if he had wanted to shoot color all his life he could have shot color all his life.
Reason that in the early years — and for a while after that — there was more black and white photographic film shot than color is unrelated to chronology of production. Fact is, color film was much more expensive than black and white, and was much slower than black and white (early Kodachrome had an ISO of 10, so not at all practical for everyday snapshot photography or photojournalism. Kodak's Super-XX had an ISO of 200).
Even more important, black and white film was essential to photojournalists because newspapers weren't printed in color, and only very rich organizations such as Life, Vogue or Vanity Fair could afford to print in color in the 40s and 50s. Interestingly, some of these magazines, such as Life, favoured black and white photography for their feature stories because it made the color advertisements stand out.
Robert Capa, for one, shot a lot in color (Kodachrome) starting in the late 30s, but couldn't sell his photographs.
In other words, it's not about history, and even less about philosophy or aesthetics. It's about economy.
It's a transcript from an unscripted interview, not a carefully honed essay; but it's not particularly confused unless you are expecting only a single answer. To my reading, he gave several:So his statement is premature and frankly sounds confusing if you read the whole thing.
How can anyone who's seen a sunset or a rose be opposed to color?
Alex, you confirmed my point. BW came first for the masses.
There would be little or no BW photography if color film were developed first.
It's a transcript from an unscripted interview, not a carefully honed essay; but it's not particularly confused unless you are expecting only a single answer. To my reading, he gave several:
- Commercial preference for b/w
Even if you mastered it he also said that you cannot avoid unexpected clashes between colors that are revealed only later when you print the photo
- Difficulty of composing with colour for his chosen subject matter
- Colour is/can be a distraction unless you have mastered that difficulty
- Colour fidelity is tricky
- B/W is a useful abstraction
- Laziness
Your statement was:
You said nothing about "the masses". I did not confirm your point, I disproved it.
On the subject of colour v black & white, just look at the films of Andrei Tarkovsky who switched between the two in order to convey his poetic imagery. In my opinion the best film director ever.
Didn't he do both in one film?
I think he did both in several films. If you want to learn more about him read his book 'sculpting in time'.
Who gives a hoot what HCB thought about color photography? I don't ask the butcher for his opinion on plumbing, either. It wasn't his area of interest and expertise. His opinion on the matter, insofar as we can even know it today (and provided it was constant and consistent in the first place) is as relevant as that of, say, my next door neighbor or Mr Khan who runs a tandoori joint in Uttar Pradesh.
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