Well, I’m back again on the difference between color and b/w photographs. With our new insulated windows I can use the large window in our studio for window lit photography, or natural light. The two senior I did yesterday really liked the b/w shots, and I’m still intrigued by the difference between color and bw and why we like the bw, and I really mean why we like it. What does the absence of color bring to the photograph and the mind that color does not. How can the absence of some quality be a quality? We don’t see in black and white.
I think the answer is that in the absence of color the imagination has a place to play. It is like b/w is information prior to our painting the object with color, or a painting by numbers before we apply our crayons. B/W is like raw undoctored data in its pure form where shape and relationship are easily visible before the color comes on and clouds the eyes with what we are conditioned to expect. So b/w has a timeless quality because it is not a reflection or copy of our “natural world,” which is conditioned by thought and what we always expect to see. People come here “expecting” to be disappointed by their image, which is a conditioning of the mind, and are pleasantly surprised when their expectation is disappointed.
B/W does a great job disappointing negative expectations. It shows us that we are all timeless and all orginals, and in that originallity we discover that we are all beautiful. Ah, perhaps that is the answer. We are conditioned to see ourselves in comparison and contrast to others who are either less or more beautiful that us, but b/w shows us our uniqueness, which is prior to our mind applying the color of a negative paint. 
Posted under General Observations
This post was written by ed on December 4, 2005
