Black & White Photography and the Tyranny of Color

Alex and Marian, 1986

...Allow me to propose a couple of new art laws. The first would be that all blues music shall now be performed with a full compliment of strings, woodwinds and brass. No more will a single man with a lone guitar perform blues music. Think of the absurdity of the Boston Pops attempting "Boom, Boom, Boom." And I will propose a second new art law: All written communication shall henceforth be in novel form. Absurdity again. Now we will have to do 500 pages to express William Carlos Williams' "The Red Wheelbarrow" and spend 300 pages alone to describe the white chickens...

...If Williams would have used 500 pages to do “The Red Wheelbarrow,” it would have never been read, and if it had, it wouldn’t have made any sense. Had John Lee Hooker been forced to round up a full orchestra to perform, the unique character and power of his music would have been buried in a hundred layers of violins and clarinets. It would lose its voice. Its vision would be completely obscured by a sea of superfluous sound...

...To bring this around, it is my contention that the black and white photograph is a medium in itself with a distinctive voice and vision. The black and white acts upon our brains differently than a color photo. I believe that black and white remains valid and even necessary in our palette of media. To surrender black and white to the tyranny of color would be equivalent to the loss of blues, jazz, poetry and short stories in favor of symphonies and novels. There are some ideas that symphony orchestras and novels just don't get across very well....

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