I sometimes get so caught up in all the cool things I can do with color now I forget the simpler yet often deeper pleasures of good black & white. I’ve mentioned often enough that, photographically-speaking, my influences all spring from the pool of talent surrounding and comprising the f64 Group, a legendary coterie of pioneer photographers from the 1930s and 40s. I’ve spent many a lazy afternoon in a dark room with trays of chemicals and an enlarger and a selection of negatives, reveling in the creation of textures and tones. There is still something magic watching a white sheet of paper “grow” an image in solution, the latent photon-affected silver salts tarnishing in a couple of minutes into the order and definition of a photograph. It’s not something you could ever do in color and now that the digital age in upon us it is a treat a great many people may never have.
But I spent almost forty years in a lab, I’ve had my share of watching that kind of magic, and for the time being I don’t miss it a bit. But I would miss new black & white images. In many ways, I still regard black & white as the superior medium. Opinions vary, naturally.
