[pure-silver] Re: not so pure silver

To the extreme of this example: a friend had a show at a coffee house a while 
back and instead of picking a subject or theme, his photos were all over the 
place from concert shots to landscapes to portraits.  It looked like a jumbled 
mess. The work was in color and B&W.  Each image could stand on it's own, but 
in a group it was just too scattered to work together.  
Personally, I felt constricted by the thematic rule, but having seen a 
presentation that broke that rule in every way possible,  I realized it's a 
good rule.  I don't know if there are fine lines in between with color and b&w, 
but I think that's where a good curator comes in.
Given that your subject is thematic, a color shot here or there can't hurt.  As 
others have mentioned use your gut and place them where they seem to work best 
together, or where seeing a color shot amongst the b&w seems a natural 
progression in the story.
Eric
 

________________________________
From: Shannon Stoney <shannonstoney@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Friday, March 27, 2009 9:27:44 AM
Subject: [pure-silver] not so pure silver

I have a show coming up in Abilene about an adobe house in Presidio, TX.  I 
have 12 black and white prints and I am fixing to get three color prints made. 
This is the first time I've had a show with color and b&w together, and I'm not 
sure how it's going to look, but I'm going to do it anyway.

Then I started thinking about another project I'm working on, which started out 
as b&w holga panoramas about domestic animals.  Then I found some old color 
negs with the same format:  Holga, animals.  But they're color!  Some of them 
are cool, though. So now I want to have that project be mixed color and B&W too.

The color ones have to be printed by a lab, because I don't print color at home 
and anyway some are transparencies.  I guess I could make them gray scale and 
have them printed that way by the lab.

I'm just wondering:  do people on this list think that it looks strange or 
disconcerting to have color and silver in the same show, by the same person?  
You see group shows all the time with them mixed up, but then you're not seeing 
all the pictures as one body of work.  Maybe if one person did them all, and 
there are color and b&w, it means there are 2 bodies of work?  I also am 
thinking of including some photogravures in the series about animals.

Once I saw a show in Houston by a photographer who had documented her mother's 
life over about 20 years.  She had silver, color, video, everything. It didn't 
bother me at all.  I wonder why we have this "rule" that you should have a 
"unified body of work."

Also I have noticed recently that filmmakers are mixing b&w and color in the 
same film:  "I'm Not There" was like that, and "Shine a Light."

--shannon



http://shannonstoney-twors.blogspot.com/
http://branguslane.blogspot.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shannonstoney/

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