Not sure why, but my work of late has taken me back to my early grade school years when a) I still attended class, and b) when all of my photos were still in B&W—largely because I couldn’t afford the costs of buying and processing color film.
Subtract.
Color TV was still a few years in the future when I first picked up my father’s Argus 35mm camera. Back then I lived in a mostly black and white mass media world like everyone else. Apart from the occasional Saturday matinee at the Sequoia Theatre (where two bits still bought a double feature and a couple of shorts), my brain had not yet been exposed to the far more immersive (and addictive) mass media world of electronically reproduced color. At the time color was still a fairly precious commodity in popular culture, found most frequently in Saturday morning cartoons, or in print media like comic books, magazines, and the Sunday funnies.
Subtract.
Looking back, I now realize that black and white was to electronic media in the 1950s and early 60s what radio was to TV: a far smaller data set that demanded from me a correspondingly larger investment of imagination and emotion in order to extract whatever emotive and spiritual magic was concealed within. Like radio, black and white required me to fill in the visual blanks with my own imagination, to search for nuance and meaning revealed somewhere in the shadows and contrasts of blacks and whites and grays.
Subtract.
Fade out, fade in: Now well into my eighth decade, with the consumption of tens of thousands of color HDTV programs, streaming videos, and films under my belt, I still can’t shake my emotional and spiritual connection with black and white, how it always whets my appetite for more, and how it still persists in my dreams. Perhaps the most enduring element of my relationship with B&W manifests in how—unlike color—it compels me time and again to slow down with a commensurate demand to participate. For me, color is the drive-thru. B&W is the sit-down diner…
Subtract.
Is the quality of life in a world of excess a function of subtraction? Can less electronic data translate into a greater connection? You tell me.
As always, many thanks for spending time with me and my art, and all the best to you and yours!