[pure-silver] Re: not so pure silver
----- Original Message ----- From: "Shannon Stoney" <shannonstoney@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
To: <pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, March 27, 2009 7:27 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


     I have not yet read the other responses in this
thread. I have seen many exhibits of photographers who shot
both B&W and color and both are included, although sometimes
in separate rooms. I think if "unity" is a consideration it
should probably be in some area like subject matter or theme
not the type of reproduction.
     I have a different idea about movies being a
frustrated movie maker. I think switching from color to B&W
and the reverse is distracting to the audience reminding
them that they are seeing what is essentially an optical
illusion. The idea of theatrical movies is to make the
watcher forget he or she is seeing something mechanical and
any technical glitch will spoil the illusion. I consider
such variation in presentation type such a reminder,
although there may be rare exceptions.
    The curious thing is that in the early days of color
productions often had color sections. This was simply
because color was so expensive. Even then they are a bit
jarring. One of the few exceptions to this is the opening of
_The Wizard of OZ_ which is in B&W and switches to color
when Dorothy enters Oz. This is done because the author, L.
Frank Baum, described Kansas as being all gray. I think one
can find few other examples that work.
    I could go on about this sort of stuff but its sort of
OT here and IMO irrelevant to the subject.
--
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA
dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

=============================================================================================================
To unsubscribe from this list, go to www.freelists.org and logon to your 
account (the same e-mail address and password you set-up when you subscribed,) 
and unsubscribe from there.

Other related posts: