[LRflex] WAS: Re: leicareflex Digest V4 #299 NOW: B&W vs colour & caring.
- From: Ted Grant <tedgrant@xxxxxxx>
- To: leicareflex@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 01 Nov 2007 10:11:59 -0800
KEITH LONGMORE offered:
Subject: [LRflex] Re: leicareflex Digest V4 #299
Ted, Steve
>>>I can't really answer properly at this time, because I'm about to head
for the airport and sunny Detroit.
But, very quickly....Ted I remember your statement, quoted by another
forum member that colour photographs show the clothes and black and
white the soul (as near verbatim as I remember it). I actually don't
think B/W shows the soul, either. <<<<<
Be that as it may, we each have our opinion. However my opinion is based on
over half a century of day to day photographic working experience and
shooting assignments constantly during that time. The usual meaning and
acceptance of the quotation implies B&W has much greater impact than colour
when illustrating heavy duty life moments. The Operating theatre of a
hospital, war and all those moments of life, death, the down trodden and
destruction simply because it doesn't have colour to distract from the
"content" of the moment.
Now that doesn't mean colour doesn't have impact sometimes under similar
moments. Blood and bodies for example sure as hell have heavy duty impact in
colour! But the same picture in B&W carries a powerful impact because it
allows the human mind to see the content without the distraction in the red
of blood and body parts! Quite frankly you have to see it for real to
understand! You may have.
>>>As you say in your answer, you can't truly get inside someone's head with
photographs.<<<
No you can't really, but their expression sometimes illustrates what's going
on inside the mind or the subjects soul.
>>Interesting, perhaps to draw a parallel to the Madeleine McCann affair: it
seems that a lot
of people think the McCanns are guilty of killing their own child because
they don't show the 'right' emotions in the media. Obviously the public has
a perception of what it expects to see - but how do you catch that when all
you have is a camera? (Whatever the public
expectation might be?) And maybe a manager/editor whose only concern is
selling copy?<<<
An interesting point, however it doesn't matter what the public thinks, nor
the editor. I mean just because the parents don't have an expression
signifying guilt or innocence on their faces has nothing to do with the
photo content. Nor what they're going through. It's all hypothetical
conjecture and not a physical item. If the parents had blood all over their
clothing, then that's easy camera prey. But because they don't show the
emotion expected by the public, it's not possible to photograph their inner
thoughts.
We as photographers/viewers are moved by what's before us regardless of
subject as long as it's something recordable. What we can't do is photograph
thoughts inside the human mind. An expression triggered by those thoughts,
maybe?
My feelings about the medical profession/patient have never been bothered in
anyway by what I saw. It's an incredible fascination of learning what the
human body is and can be done to it. I'm always in awe of the medical people
doing what they do with such dedication and care. But I do have a major
problem with people who can't look at a child being cared for in a world
class hospital, even though child maybe taped and bandaged.
What to see in the picture is, the child receiving tender loving care and in
most cases will survive to live another bunch of years. That doesn't mean I
don't have gut wrenching belly twisting moments when seeing and or hearing
the state of the patient, I do and some times shed a tear! Particularly if
one is a "people person" as I.
Look this conversation isn't going anywhere particularly if you haven't had
the experience of trying to photograph dying children from nuclear exposure
or other things! That is, while you are crying so hard you can hardly see!
While shooting it in colour and B&W then see which one has the greater
impact later!
ted
In your comments below to Steve, he can speak for himself.
Steve
Don't think I'm criticising or at all denigrating what you do, indeed,
quite the reverse. But I was musing over the whole subject area;
indeed, a part of it that interests me. (I've always been passionately
interested in things historical, good bad, etc., and man's inhumanitiy
to man is an enormous part of that.) I'm not sure what I feel about
your subjects, and maybe that is a part of the wider issue. I have a
clearer sense of what I feel about the subjects that I described,
perhaps because they're both personal experience-based and, given that
I'm old enough to remember the centre of Coventry in ruins after WWII,
with direct contact with people involved, including my own parents and
brother, so much closer to my own involvement.
I found it difficult to put on paper what I was trying to say, and
answering even more difficult, especially in a hurry. Maybe I'll send
off line when I return, rather than cluttering up the forum.
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