Why is the higher level photography mostly black and white??

[Helge]

Photography came to be considered a serious art form as a purely monochromatic medium. In a sense, it gained its highest level of respectability as that - with people like Stieglitz, Adams, Strand, Weston. Also in a sense, it is not really a respectable art form any more. It's a spray of vomit you see in every conceivable direction for every conceivable use.

Same could be said for the other graphics arts. But if profligacy and prolificness was to be the negative arbiters of whether something is art or not, especially high or fine art, that leaves art as a very easily hollowed out concept.
It has to be more than that, and more resilient than that to be a real concept.

 

[fdonadio]

Case in point, some years ago, I had an Ansel Adams calendar pinned to my cube wall at work, a colleague stopped by, looks at the photo for a bit, and says “nice picture, too bad it’s not in color”

After a business meeting, one of the guys from my customers’ team looked at my laptop screen and saw the “wallpaper”. It’s a photo I took of a train leaving a station, in black and white. He asked something about the photo and I mentioned I had taken it myself, that photography was one of my hobbies, and that I would like to sell prints of these photos so it wasn’t a hobby anymore. And he closed the conversation with: “but who would pay for a photo like this? It’s black and white!”

 

[Don_ih]

But if profligacy and prolificness was to be the negative arbiters of whether something is art or not, especially high or fine art, that leaves art as a very easily hollowed out concept.
It has to be more than that, and more resilient than that to be a real concept.

It would need to be more than that, and it is. It's ubiquity of imagery. Photography, bright bold colourful glossy pictures. Everywhere. I'm not talking about art - I'm talking about respectability of an art form. Black and white photography still has the residue of what legitimized it as art in the first place. Colour has the smell of porn.

 

[Pieter12]

I’m offering reasons and explanations to the original question, and the subsequent answers.

If you have an axe to grind, go to PMs and I’ll decide if you are worth ignoring or not.

I have no axe to grind, and I really don't give a damn about sensors.

But I do agree with you that "the art world is highly contaminated by speculation and politics."

 

[Helge]

After a business meeting, one of the guys from my customers’ team looked at my laptop screen and saw the “wallpaper”. It’s a photo I took of a train leaving a station, in black and white. He asked something about the photo and I mentioned I had taken it myself, that photography was one of my hobbies, and that I would like to sell prints of these photos so it wasn’t a hobby anymore. And he closed the conversation with: “but who would pay for a photo like this? It’s black and white!”

Apart from him being an arse, he might as well have extended it to “why would anyone pay for a photo?”.
People are stupid full stop.
You’ll find most people also question paying for original art that isn’t from one of the hundred or so big historical painters.
The “anyone can do it” argument has always been strong.
We even have a special word for it in danish: Rindalism

 

[Don_ih]

The “anyone can do it” argument has always been strong.

And now, with photography, it's even stronger. Magazines and newspapers routinely use phone pictures. Most things a photographer used to be hired to do are now done using a cell phone or a digital camera set on auto. The photo studio in everyone's hand has made everyone suddenly an authority on what is and is not good photography.
I think someone up above said it's mostly photographers that might think b&w is "higher" art than colour. I'd agree with that. But I'll also stick by the argument that, for most people, almost no photo is art.

 

[pbromaghin]

Also in a sense, it is not really a respectable art form any more. It's a spray of vomit you see in every conceivable direction for every conceivable use.

I love this.

 

[removed account4]

oh no, I am not implying that XD I'm just saying that I am most used seeing professional photographers using black and white, not that it is superior, I was just asking why that happens, so please do not misunderstand my words, the last thing I want to do is causing an argument about wich one is better, I think both are bretty beautifuul when used correctly.

interesting that in Portugal most professional photographers use b/w ... I live between Boston and NYC and for the most part most professional work is done in color and I could guess about 99% of it is color digital ( fine by me there are very few if any labs left that can do 4 hour chrome turnaround or 1 hour c41 processing they all closed down or have so few work they don't run all the time ).. I never see any professional work done in b/w. not even the high end portrait photographers, they all shoot color digital too because that's what the public wants. maybe its a European thing?
I can imagine some folks these days might be nostalgic editors and gallery owners and purchasers of portraits who want black and white that is hand made seeing its not hard to push a button or rub a sponge or fiddle with a slider and turn any beautiful and saturated color image into a beautiful black and white image in a matter of seconds...
its all about taste (still)...
but I don't know what used correctly means because even if used incorrectly black and white and color images can be pretty beautiful ..

Also in a sense, it is not really a respectable art form any more.

when was it exactly that photography was a respectable art form?


YMMV

 

[Pioneer]

interesting that in Portugal most professional photographers use b/w ...

I was thinking the same thing.

 

[Don_ih]

when was it exactly that photography was a respectable art form?

I already said: Stieglitz, Strand, Weston, Adams - all those guys who broke photography out of being simply a record. People despise pictorialism, but that was the first movement of photography being something other than a simple document. By the time Paul Strand was printing pictures of shadows cast by chair rails, photography was at the height of its respectability as an art form.

But sit back and look through some of those old b&w "artistic" photos - most wouldn't get a second look in front of your average Instagram scroller. No one gives a flying F about photography as an art form, anymore. And, frankly, hardly anyone ever did. The height of its respectability and acceptance was never really that high. Now the opinion of most is "anyone can do that".

And, of course, photographic abstractions and manipulations are considered art insofar as they are not considered photography.

 

[removed account4]

hi don
I'll have to agree to disagree with you about photography being "art"
I've studied the subject enough to know its never really been considered
an art form, if it was it wouldn't be in the basements of museums but with all the other "museum stuff"
not to say that lots of people haven't tried to elevate it.. ..

the problem I find with photography is that there are too many people who
who delegitimize different variants of the practice because they don't like it
or think its too easy or tries to change photography into something-else ( whatever that means )
and when you ask them to explain what they mean they refuse... other than to repeat the same nonsense..
im not 150 years old yet but its the same BS that happened with dry plates and roll film cameras.
like your commentary about spray and vomit. ... plenty of people have done the same thing with film..
there are ads I used to have for falling plate cameras that advertised 1 plate / second... SSDD

I agree with you about movers and shakers on IG &C. ... a lot of photography ( whether it is done like 150 mili-seconds ago or 150 years ago )
is really boring.. but the beauty of it is that someone made it and thinks its NOT boring at all. and that's kind of fun..

 

[Don_ih]

I'll have to agree to disagree with you about photography being "art"

I likely have a more inclusive notion of art than what you would expect. Photography, for the most part, can't help but be art - that doesn't mean it's particularly worthwhile. Art is easy to produce and mostly easy to ignore. Museums exhibit valuable art - not necessarily valuable to you or me but what at least some people consider valuable. But art doesn't need to be valuable - either personally or culturally to be art.

By the vomit thing - I wasn't making reference to digital but to the massive proliferation of images that blew into all print media as soon as they could cheaply reproduce the images.

but the beauty of it is that someone made it and thinks its NOT boring at al

That's art.

 

[Luis-F-S]

I believe it was Paul Strand who said that photography and color have nothing in common!

 

[Helge]

And now, with photography, it's even stronger. Magazines and newspapers routinely use phone pictures. Most things a photographer used to be hired to do are now done using a cell phone or a digital camera set on auto. The photo studio in everyone's hand has made everyone suddenly an authority on what is and is not good photography.
I think someone up above said it's mostly photographers that might think b&w is "higher" art than colour. I'd agree with that. But I'll also stick by the argument that, for most people, almost no photo is art.

Same goes for any art. And really this has always been so. But has been especially accented by the availability of mechanisms to generate something that has the superficial sheen to the naive peasant of being higher art, in recent decades.
In a way art is the ultimate Dunning-Kruger test.

 

[Pieter12]

Same goes for any art. And really this has always been so. But has been especially accented by the availability of mechanisms to generate something that has the superficial sheen to the naive peasant of being higher art, in recent decades.
In a way art is the ultimate Dunning-Kruger test.

Nice try to toss out some jargon, but I really don't think it applies here.

 

[Don_ih]

Same goes for any art. And really this has always been so. But has been especially accented by the availability of mechanisms to generate something that has the superficial sheen to the naive peasant of being higher art, in recent decades.
In a way art is the ultimate Dunning-Kruger test.

I find the case with art is that too many people overestimate how special it is to create art. Artistic expression is a normal human mode of expression. Finding an artistic piece very valuable or culturally important is a rarity. But art itself is not as rare and rarefied as people seem to think.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Is this thread about nonsensical stereotypes, or what? I happen to do both color and black and white printing in the darkroom, and do both equally well. One can practice either at any level, unless they are physiologically color-blind. And I have no problem exhibiting color prints side by side with black and white ones.

 

[removed account4]

That's art.

naah that’s got nothing to do with art. It just means the person who made it didn’t delete or take the snapshot off of the fridge

 

[tballphoto]

I find the case with art is that too many people overestimate how special it is to create art. Artistic expression is a normal human mode of expression. Finding an artistic piece very valuable or culturally important is a rarity. But art itself is not as rare and rarefied as people seem to think.

Well you can find chamber pots all over the American country side being sold as crock pots/chili pots these days that have more cultural importance then 80% of what is being sold brand new as "art".

 

[Helge]

Nice try to toss out some jargon, but I really don't think it applies here.

Jargon‽ You mean term of the year 2020?
It applies doubly so.
“Everybody” is a freaking expert on aesthetics, and think that their precious opinion applies.
The stupider they are, the louder they speak.
While the precious few real experts, or people who do actually know a thing or two doesn’t have a Tacoma Narrows or false claims of cold fusion to point to, as engineers and scientists do.

It’s like trying to teach a chimp the fine points of flower arrangement.
Chimps are noble beings but they totally lack the cloud of concepts and tacit ideas that we take for granted.
Their first thought is “can I eat it?” And secondly “flowers are kind of pretty and colorful”.
And that’s as far as they will go on their own.
The music is not in the piano.

 

[Helge]

I find the case with art is that too many people overestimate how special it is to create art. Artistic expression is a normal human mode of expression. Finding an artistic piece very valuable or culturally important is a rarity. But art itself is not as rare and rarefied as people seem to think.

There is a hierarchy and taxonomy of art. High and low. And applied arts and fluxus and highly symbolic art, are four axis end extremes (though not necessarily mutually exclusive).
Same with the matter of applied and used resources. From the haiku that changed the world to a palace of gold and ivory.
And that’s just the barest of an outline of an epistemology of art.

 

[Don_ih]

There is a hierarchy and taxonomy of art. High and low. And applied arts and fluxus and highly symbolic art, are four axis end extremes (though not necessarily mutually exclusive).
Same with the matter of applied and used resources. From the haiku that changed the world to a palace of gold and ivory.
And that’s just the barest of an outline of an epistemology of art.

No - that's an assessment of a valuation of the arts.

 

[Don_ih]

Jargon‽ You mean term of the year 2020?

He means you used a specialist term - belonging to some branch of study - without explaining what it means. It's a bit like name-dropping, but academically more acceptable (at least on the surface).

 

[Don_ih]

naah that’s got nothing to do with art. It just means the person who made it didn’t delete or take the snapshot off of the fridge

If that has nothing to do with art, then you'll need to explain what art is - why is it that someone's Instagram photo is not art and a painting in a museum is? You need to do that without introducing a notion of value. Value applies to an identity - you've not yet established that identity.
But who cares, anyway? No one is actually interested in a real idea. People are truly only interested in maintaining some ephemeral mystery - the religion of art.

 

[removed account4]

If that has nothing to do with art, then you'll need to explain what art is - why is it that someone's Instagram photo is not art and a painting in a museum is? You need to do that without introducing a notion of value. Value applies to an identity - you've not yet established that identity.
But who cares, anyway? No one is actually interested in a real idea. People are truly only interested in maintaining some ephemeral mystery - the religion of art.

I am not sure what art is to be honest with you. I have studied it academically since the 1980s and have been practicing it as well, the idea of "art" is of those concepts that slips through one's fingers. As I said there is more to it than not deleting it from one's phone or putting it on the fridge, or one's instagram feed. The museum is a modern concept and the idea of something being created soly as "art" is a new concept as well. A while back it made people rather aggravated on this website when I said that some of the paintings / artifacts that are found in museums were not created as "art" like cavepaintings but our modern world has said that is what they are... for a variety of reasons.
I saw an exhibit once that was a performance of a woman in a bathtub taking a bath and washing her hair and it was "art". I went to a gallery and the owner pointed to a pile of debris on the floor and it was called "art" and it was only a year ago ( or more ? ) that someone sold a banana duct taped to a wall as "art" and somebody pointed out a photograph of their grandkid missing their 2 front teeth on their phone / instagram feed is art too, but only if its made with one of those filters that turns an ordinary snapshot to a wet plate photograph.