Every second thousands of color photos are taken all over the world. Color plays an important role in them. It shows what kind of dress your daughter was wearing, what the sea looks like from the hotel window. In catalogs we look at the color of shoes and cars, dresses and laptops. Professionals use color to show the characteristics and appeal of products. Color carries important information about our world. Besides, color is an overt emotion.However, in exhibitions and galleries, most of the images are in black and white. Michael Freeman writes about this in his book Black and White Digital Photography. We can trust this author: he is a famous photographer and a true connoisseur of photography. His books – named above, as well as “The Tao of Digital Photography. The Art of Making Good Images,” “The Photographer’s Eye. How to learn to understand photography, understand and appreciate good photos” – I recommend every photographer to read it.
Photographer Evgeny Artemov on
Graduated from the cinematography faculty of VGIK.
Worked as a cameraman at the APN’s Chief Editorial Office for Television Information.
Member of the United Committee of Graphic Artists of the USSR from 1977. Worked in different editorial offices, publishing houses, agencies.
Participant of many photo exhibitions.
E. The works by Artemov are kept in the collections of the Slavonic Library in Paris, the American Museum in St. Petersburg, in private collections in France, Germany, the USA and America.
Currently a teacher at the StudioA photography school, f-f-f
Photography is always a fragment of our world
There are two main reasons for the prevalence of black and white photography. First of all, the art photography market is very conservative and photography has been black and white for most of its history. Second, for a photograph to become a work of art in the traditional sense of the term, it must stop being a simple reproduction of reality. It has to be different from it.
The first difference is size. Second difference: photography is always a fragment of our world. She is part of the whole. The third difference is the flatness of photography and the three-dimensionality of reality.
There are other important differences, but they are not obvious to most viewers. But the difference between a black-and-white photo and a color one is immediately apparent. Black and white photography creates conventionality, helps generalization, and helps the viewer perceive the depicted object as an artistic statement rather than as a window into reality.
Put simply, in black-and-white art photography the signifier is not the signified. That is, what we are shooting, the subject, is not the same as the subject of the photo, the author’s thought, feeling, statement.
1. Paul Roark, “Lake of a Thousand Islands.”
This image was taken by Paul Roark on the high plateau of Ansel Adams Wilderness, named for Ansel Adams, the most famous photographer in the United States, in 1984. The plateau is part of the Sierra Nevada Range in California and is part of Yosemite National Park. Lake of a Thousand Islands is a favorite shooting area A. Adams.
Paul Roark made a cylindrical panorama of eight vertical frames with a Leica M9 and assembled them on Photoshop. The main problem of processing was to get a good contrast in the sky, to highlight the light clouds, to emphasize the state of dawn in August. Printed with Eboni graphite ink on Arches Hot Press paper with no coating to accept the ink. Digital technology.
Analog and digital
There are several methods of taking black and white photos. The very first, historical way is analog. You shoot the subject on black-and-white film, develop it, and print it on traditional black-and-white developing paper, or with a magnifier or contact method by placing the negative on the paper and holding it against the glass . Analog photo printing recreates the greatest number of halftones. Analog prints have a particular tonal rendering. This is the distinctive trademark of traditional photography. Note that an analog photo does not exist in digital form, so it can only be viewed in its original form. Looking at the scanned image on a computer monitor immediately puts the work in the category of hybrid technology.
If you only have a digital camera, then you have to take a digital photo, convert it to black and white in some program, and either view the photo on a computer monitor or print the resulting image with a photo printer.
2. Paul Roark, Lake Tenaya
A high mountain lake named after a Tenaya Indian chief. Ansel Adams has filmed the lake and its surroundings many times. Snow usually covers the roads to the lake until June.
Paul made a vertical panorama of two frames and manually combined them in Photoshop.
Leica M9 camera, 21 mm Biogon Zeiss lens, red filter. Printing with Eboni graphite ink on Arches Hot Press paper with no coating to receive the ink. Digital technology.
Ways of digital photo printing
There are three basic methods of digital photo printing.
First, inkjet digital printing with an inkjet printer. This method is the richest in halftones, allows precise control of the process and is most commonly used for photographs for galleries and collectors.
Second, printing on a variety of laser printers. Most often used for large print runs, in the fast printing industry, for creating photobooks. Image quality is somewhat lower than with inkjet printing.
Thirdly, there are printers that print from a digital file on traditional developer color photo paper. We encounter these types of prints most often when we send them to a regular photo lab. Among others, there are huge DURST printers that print on paper about a meter wide. The technical quality of these prints is comparable to inkjet, but aesthetically there are many subtle differences.
Inkjet printing gives greater image sharpness and detail. Digital printing with developing creates a sense of greater image volume. Inkjet printing makes it possible to use papers with a wide variety of surface textures, including traditional artist papers without special coatings. In contrast digital developing printing is limited in the type of paper used, these prints always have a somewhat “synthetic”, artificial look. Branded manufacturer logos on the reverse side of develop papers, polyethylene coatings on the front and back, gives the prints a poppy, chippy flavor. As the black and white picture is printed on color photographic paper due to the synthesis of dyes the print has different shades when it is illuminated by different light sources.
If you shoot on film, then scan a slide or negative, get a digital file, and then print with a photo printer, you’re using hybrid technology. It combines both the advantages and disadvantages of analog and digital techniques. It delivers good image quality and is suitable for a variety of applications.
There is an interesting kind of hybrid technology – printing through a digital negative. The digital negative is made on a special clear film, most often by inkjet printing. It is then applied to photographic paper, printed by contact, and then the print is developed. A digital negative can be obtained from any digital file. Georgy Kolosov, a fine photographer, shot his new series “The Good Apartment” – as opposed to Bulgakov’s “Bad Apartment” – with a digital camera. He then made digital negatives and printed positives from them on traditional black and white developable photo papers. Soon we will be able to enjoy this series at the exhibition. Digital negatives can also be used in historical photography techniques, such as cyanotype, bromo-oil, carbon, platinum-palladium photo prints, and others. Most black and white photographs are printed today with hybrid technology.
3. Paul Roark, “Foxtail and Circular Peak”
Foxtail is the slang name for withered trees in the highlands. The photo was taken on the high mountain plateau of Golden Trout. Leica M9 camera, Zeiss 35mm f/2 lens.8 Biogon, red filter. June 2012. Printed with Eboni graphite inks on Arches Hot Press paper with no coating to receive the ink. Digital Technology.
Preservation of black and white prints
The longevity of black and white prints is important. Galleries and collectors, when investing in their collections, want to be sure that the pictures they have purchased will not change their properties. That is why 40×50 inch prints by American photographer Greg Gorman were sold in New York for different prices. The ones printed with archival ink cost 280,000 Dollars per sheet, regardless of the subject. A Sam Farvar photo, printed back in 1999 with ink that did not meet archival standards, was valued at 160,000 Dollars. The difference is almost double!
The greatest, virtually unlimited preservation is in black and white photographs printed by inkjet printing, on artist papers, without a special coating to accept the ink. In this case, black graphite ink is used. They contain no colorants other than finely ground graphite. 4 to 7 shades of gray are used to produce high quality images. Graphite prints on uncoated paper can be washed down with water after printing and nothing remains but paper and graphite. Just as in the drawings of the old masters of the Middle Ages. These beautiful drawings have survived to this day, and are over 500 years old. Jon Cone, an American photographer and master printmaker, printed Gregory Colbert’s photographs in this way for his remarkable exhibition Ashes and Snow. The exhibition set a world record for the number of people who visited it. Huge photos are printed on sheets of handmade Japanese paper about 5 millimeters thick with Piezographi graphite ink.
Another pioneer of graphite ink printing, Paul Roark. This photographer developed his own graphite ink design under the Eboni label. Paul Roark uses both hybrid and purely digital techniques to create a black and white image.
The second most durable black and white prints are black and white developed on black and white photographic paper. Of these, the ones without a polyethylene coating are the best. Such prints on traditional paper with a barite layer cost more. All over the world there is experience in their storage and restoration. It is hoped that with proper fixation and good flushing they will live for over a hundred years.
The biggest problems with preservation are black and white prints made with color ink this is the most common method on special papers for inkjet printing, which have a coating for receiving ink. Coating is the weakest point of the paper-coating-ink triad involved in inkjet printing. The first practicable inkjet technology appeared in the U.S. around 1988, and mass inkjet printing even a decade later. So no matter what the manufacturing firms claim about the multi-year durability of inkjet prints, there’s still no real experience with storing them.
The Gallery of Classical Photography in New York recently hosted an exhibition by the magnificent Italian photographer Elio Ciol. It showed black and white photographs printed by analogue method, from a black and white negative through a magnifier, on traditional developed photographic paper photographs printed by inkjet printing with graphite inks and photographs printed with color inks. The prints on developing photographic paper were the most malleable and had the most halftones. In second place were the prints made by the author with graphite ink. The prints made with color inks were the poorest in halftones. Compared to the other prints, the image seemed rough and jagged.
The next part of this article will outline a detailed technique for creating a black and white image from a digital file.
4. Paul Roark, “Dawn at Camp Golden Trout
Camp Golden Trout is in the high Sierra of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Repeatedly visited by Ansel Adams. Paul Roark shot it with a Rolleiflex GX camera on 60mm film, using an 80mm f/2 fixed focal length lens.8. Kodak T-max 100 film.
The main problem was to darken the sky in such a way that the pine needles would remain light. Orange and polarizing filters were used together. Hybrid technology.
5. Paul Roark, “Poison Ivy and Eucalyptus.”
Paul Roark used a Rolleiflex GX camera and Konica Impressia 50 60 mm color negative film. Negative scanned and green channel used.
Paul later abandoned this technology due to what he considered to be unacceptable graininess when using a single channel. It is interesting that when you increase the “Photoshop” file sent by Paul to 100%, the grain is not visible.
Paul Roark is a faithful follower of Ansel Adams and the American landscape school. Adams shot his most famous photographs with an 8×10″ camera on a 20×25 cm negative. Of course, such images are absolutely devoid of grain, they are very sharp and detailed.
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6, 7. Georgy Kolosov. From the “Good Flat” series.
Unlike Paul Roark, our well-known and beautiful photographer Georgi Kolosov believes that grain in photography should be. It helps create conventionality, extends the perceived range of halftones through randomization – the random distribution of errors in digital image processing.
The pictures were taken with a Pentax K7 digital camera with a “kit” lens, with a Marumi Soft Fantasy filter screwed on top. In-camera processing, creative mode “Soft” 3 steps, ISO 1600. In further processing in Photoshop, the main effort was to eliminate digital noise and image artifacts. Digital negatives were made from the obtained files on an inkjet printer. The negatives were printed with contact images on black and white developing paper. Hybrid technology.
8. Sergey Tkachenko. Nikolskaya Street
Sergey Tkachenko is a cameraman, but has been working in photography for the past 15 years.
Sergey shoots views of old New York on black-and-white film with a domestic panoramic camera Horizon 205. The camera is heavy, but sharp, and shoots 60 mm film. Equipped with a vertical lens shift mechanism, which makes it very convenient for shooting architecture and city views. The 60×130mm negative is scanned and then photoshopped. The pictures are tinted brownish to imitate printing on chlorosilver developed photographic paper. Hybrid Technology.
Panoramas by Sergey Tkachenko, printed in a format of more than 2 meters on the long side, decorate the offices of major New York corporations.
How has the digital age impacted the art market’s preference for black-and-white photography? Has the surge of technological advancements altered the traditional perception and value of monochrome photographs?
How has the shift to digital photography impacted the demand for black-and-white photography in the art market? Are collectors still drawn to the timeless allure of monochrome imagery, or has color become more desired in the digital age?
How has the shift to digital technology impacted the art market’s conservative stance on black-and-white photography? Has the digital age led to a greater acceptance and appreciation for color photography, or does black and white still dominate the market?
The shift to digital technology has undoubtedly impacted the art market’s conservative stance on black-and-white photography. The digital age has led to a greater acceptance and appreciation for color photography as it offers a vast range of possibilities for capturing and enhancing colors. This shift has also led to a more diverse and inclusive art market, with color photography gaining popularity among collectors and artists alike. However, black and white photography still holds a strong presence and continues to dominate the market, as it is often associated with artistic tradition, timeless beauty, and a certain aesthetic appeal that remains highly sought-after. Ultimately, the digital age has opened up new avenues for the appreciation of both color and black-and-white photography, expanding the art market’s perspective while still maintaining the enduring appeal of black and white.
The shift to digital technology has definitely played a role in changing the art market’s perception of black-and-white photography. With digital cameras offering high-quality color images, there has been a trend towards color photography becoming more widely accepted and appreciated. However, black and white photography still holds a special place in the art world, with its timeless and classic quality. While color photography may be gaining more attention, black and white continues to dominate the market in terms of its emotional impact and artistic value. Both styles have their own unique appeal and will always have a place in the art market.