ยฉ Elliott Erwitt
Black and White Is Not a Fix
“Color is descriptive. Black and white is interpretive.”
Elliott Erwitt said it definitively. And that sentence already contains the whole problem. Interpreting requires an intention, describing does not. Black and white is not a filter you apply afterward but a decision you make before, while you are still in the scene.
As an editor I see it immediately. A portfolio arrives, many conversions in post, and the first thing you notice is the light. Flat exposures, tones that do not hold, an original color that was probably weak or poorly handled. Black and white has not solved anything. It has only changed the problem. What was a photograph with wrong light has become a black and white photograph with wrong light. The conversion does not correct the exposure. It does not build contrast that was not there. It does not add the tonal structure that the monochrome needs to hold. If anything, it reveals what was already weak, removing the one thing that could have distracted from it, color.
Salgado chose black and white because it eliminated chromatic distraction and focused everything on the subject. It was a working condition, not a remedy. Lindbergh used it to strip away, not to beautify: he was not trying to make things prettier, he was looking for the deeper truth of the image. Moriyama felt it as a visceral response, something that activated before he even pressed the button.
All three had one thing in common: the choice was already made when they raised the camera. Not after.
This does not mean you have to shoot in black and white from the sensor or use film. It means the conversion in post must correspond to something that was already in your head before the shot. A way of seeing light, contrast, volume. If that vision was not there, black and white does not create it. It hides it for a moment. Then you see it anyway.
Marco Savarese
Editor-in-Chief
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marco Savarese
Marco Savarese is Editor-in-Chief at Eyeshot, the independent publisher he founded in Italy in 2018. He spends most of his year reading portfolios, judging the Open Call, and editing the magazine catalogue. The reading desk is open, and he takes one-to-one Professional Reviews from photographers working seriously on long-term projects.
Who Finishes Your Photograph
NOTE #210. A photo isn’t finished until it survives to where people see it. Paul Strand chose hand photogravure for Photographs of Mexico so the printed copy kept the tonal weight of his prints. Protect the tone to the end, or the worst medium decides for you.
What the Dark Does
NOTE #209. A face lost in shadow reads as underexposed, a defect to fix. Gordon Willis kept Brando’s eyes in the dark in The Godfather and held it against the studio. Before you rescue a shadow, ask what it does; if you can say it, you decided it.
The Place After
NOTE #208. Of a huge event, often only an ordinary place is left. In On This Site (1996) Joel Sternfeld photographed fifty banal American places where violence happened, each with a line of text. Photograph the aftermath, and let the line do the work.
The Photo Made Together
NOTE #206. Street photography teaches you to steal people; there’s another way. In Malick Sidibรฉ’s Bamako studio the youth chose how to be seen. Before you take someone, ask how they’d want to look, and make the photo together.
Write Your Own Rules
NOTE #205. The thing that improves you most isn’t a new camera, it’s a short list of your own faults. Tony Ray-Jones kept a notebook of orders to himself and it shaped Martin Parr. Write your three rules and keep them in your pocket.
Watch the Master Work
NOTE #204. You don’t learn from a master’s finished prints, you learn from watching them work. In 1962 Joel Meyerowitz watched Robert Frank shoot, quit his job that day, and picked up a camera. Watch the body, not the result.
The Work Before the Name
NOTE #203. The worth of a photo and the worth of the byline are two different things. Koudelka shot the 1968 Prague invasion anonymously as ‘P.P.’ and revealed it sixteen years later. Photograph what must be photographed even when no one will know it was you.
The Subject You Run From
NOTE #202. The strongest subject you have is the one you’d rather not photograph. Ishiuchi Miyako went back to Yokosuka, the occupied base town she was taught to fear, and made it her life’s work. Point the camera where it’s uncomfortable.