Black and White Photography (Part I)

Black and White Photography (Part I)

Monochrome images can be appealing and they have a small but dedicated following. But why should black and white images exist at all?

Prior to photography all images were in colour, apart from pencil or charcoal sketches for example. People were used to seeing colour pictures. In a short space of time we had plenty of images that were realistic and lifelike (compared with hand crafted art however fine). But without any colour. It was this realism that was a large part of the appeal. It brought a level of creativity to those who couldn't paint or draw. That's still true today.

Let's take a step back to the origins of photography and imagine that Niepce, Daguerre and Fox-Talbot (the early pioneers) had created colour photography from the start. Forget that the chemical technology to enable colour capture was decades away. In that scenario would anyone ever think about removing colour entirely? I guess not. There was no precedence as painters didn't limit their palette to black, white and a few shades of grey. Jump forward a century or so and imagine we never had mono television or computer screens. Loss of colour would have been seen as a 'fault', or a result of 'effects' in 1960s sci-fi films or 1970s pop videos. As we'll see later, simple removal of colour (just going greyscale) is not the way to good monochrome images.

So it's a matter of technology. Then availability. Then cost.



A typical scene early in the 20th Century that would have been recorded in mono. But this was captured in 2019.

Throughout the nineteenth century photography became ever more cheaper and more available, especially when George Eastman came along with the 'Kodak' brand. In the early twentieth century colour appeared in the form of Autochrome. Over the next 50 or 60 years many different makes of colour film appeared. Technology had advanced so much.
People demanded colour images so black and white began to take some steps back in popularity, at least as far as the mass markets were concerned. So availability (of colour) had been overcome.
The boom in popularity also drove down cost for colour photography infrastructure, culminating in the boom of high street minilabs in the 1980s and 1990s. Black and white had become a specialist area and was more expensive in comparison. Cost had been overcome.

However, one area where monochrome survived was with the enthusiast. They could develop and print their films at home quite cheaply. It's a sad fact that people saw black and white as the 'poor relation'. It was promoted in some quarters as a cheap way into photography. But it did enable many photographers to learn their craft. Some just liked the 'hands-on' that this entailed. Colour processing was much more involved.

At school and university I had access to a darkroom. Black and white allowed 'hands-on' photography, you weren't outsourcing your creativity. At least that was the theory. More so for those who'd got a greater mastery of the processes could claim that. For me and many of my peers it was enough to get a result we were happy with, warts and all in some cases. But that's fine. Refinement comes with practice. Since then time and space were not available, though having black and white processed commercially was an option. I still have those negatives that I can return to. Treats in store for sure! What was learned along the way was invaluable.

One area where mono held out for a long time was sport and reportage. This was mainly technological. High speed mono film was much more available. Due to often low levels of light high ISO was (and is) the order of the day. Think sports stadia, concert venues and the like. High speed colour wasn't available until later years. Black and white film could be processed quicker, was more tolerant of processing errors, and was thus more suited for a quick turnaround for the press. Pictures of the action in an afternoon football match would be in that evening's papers. Practicality ruled the day.



A Peugeot 205 in the Lombard RAC Rally. Driven by Louise Aitken-Walker of Scotland. November 1987

Today we have a choice without any compromises, so in my next blog I'll look at why you might choose black and white over colour.