A couple of thoughts about B&W photography in the 21st Century

BW can seem colorless and dead. Depressive. But in reality, the dark canvas only allows for the bright areas to shine more. They’re in fact emphasized and given far more value than on a color image.

When I first shot black and white thinking about it as a B&W image, it was on film in 2011 during a highschool photography class (I might include some of those images for a comparison). I have not really touched much B&W since then until now.

Since the beginning of 2021, I’ve had an urge to delve deeper into black and white photography. I am mainly a portrait photographer, but I wanted to explore it more in the genres of cityscapes and street photography (however you define the latter..). To do so, I’ve finally pulled the trigger and got myself the Ricoh GRiii when it was on sale, and I’ve been carrying it on me since April.

In the section below are a handful of my current favorites. I have taken these images in Prague at an underpass near the Vltava river. As much as I’d like to say that photography isn’t about the gear, the Ricoh GRiii’s image stabilization certainly helped a lot. Both images of the staircase have been shot at 1/80s which is in the territory of becoming difficult to handhold.

But to delve a bit more into how I think about B&W and what I think are the general public's perceptions about it. Whenever I previously thought of B&W photography my mind shifted towards images of armed conflicts of the 1st half of the 20th century. When I think about the B&W images I’ve seen in daily life in the past few years, it’s also been in a gloomy context. A donation poster with a starving child. Advertisements with a person holding their head in their hands depicting depression. The endless B&W images portraying alcoholics and drug users. The entire genre of B&W from this angle seems to serve no other purpose than to convey misery and suffering. A life with no color in it.

They say that while a painter paints with paint, a photographer paints with light; and hence we start with a black canvas as opposed to a white one. I believe this is perfect because where better to make your whites and highlights shine and pop out the most than on a black canvas? But I’m not entirely sure that the general public shares this perception.

In fact, until recently I have thought that B&W photography as an art form has faded away from the masses since we surround ourselves with color in the digital era, but during this year’s summer camp I’ve seen some of our 14 y/o kids there used B&W filters almost exclusively on apps such as Snapchat and Instagram. I haven’t gone in to inquire whether they understand the concepts of the art form such as lines, symmetry, and contrast, but I have been pleasantly surprised that they decided to play around with the idea of B&W and that it doesn’t therefore seem as faded as I had thought. And quite frankly I saw myself in them at that age.

To close of, here are two images that I had taken in the first few months of picking up photography.