Stand-alone Monochrome

Stand-alone Monochrome

By Tom Wachunas

 “Color tends to corrupt photography and absolute color corrupts it absolutely. Consider the way color film usually renders blue sky, green foliage, lipstick red, and the kiddies’ playsuit. These are four simple words which must be whispered: color photography is vulgar.” – Walker Evans   

   “Color is everything, black and white is more.” – Dominic Rouse

   “Black and white are the colors of photography. To me they symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair to which mankind is forever subjected.” – Robert Frank

   “To see in color is a delight for the eye but to see in black and white is a delight for the soul.” – Andri Cauldwell

   EXHIBIT: Eight Twentieth-Century Master Photographers, at Joseph Saxton Gallery of Photography / THROUGH MAY, 2018 / 520 Cleveland Avenue NW, downtown Canton / Featuring works by eight historic artists who changed the face of photography: Edward Weston, Berenice Abbott, W. Eugene Smith, Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Eugène Atget.  Included in the exhibit is a portrait of each photographer and four of his monumental pieces.

   Gallery hours are Wednesday – Saturday, Noon to 5 p.m. 

https://www.josephsaxton.com/

   A cautionary note: The quotations cited at the top of this post are not intended to suggest any categorically pejorative criticism, on my part, of color photography. They’re meant only to set a tone (literally and otherwise) for my appreciation of this thoughtful gathering of photographs, curated by Craig Joseph with the approval Saxton Gallery Executive Director and owner, Tim Belden.

   Once upon a time, I considered black and white photographs exclusively as mute relics, or dusty, often boring documents which at best might induce a state of sentimental nostalgia. I easily dismissed them for being merely lower-case footnotes to our now, our point-and-shoot world so enamored of declaring itself with boldface technicolor. 

  

   In the wake of those shallow assessments, I’ve long since come to some deeper realizations about the nature of photography as an art form.  Any photograph – whether in color or black and white - is an abstraction, a distillation, a framing (both intentional and intuitive) of formal as well as subjective  elements that can resonate long after the specific time and context of their making. Further, the reductive palette of a black and white photograph is no less a meaningful manipulation of light than the most spectacularly bright and colorful picture.

   After viewing this handsomely mounted show, I was moved to compile still more quotes – these from five of the eight artists exhibited – if only as a salutary reminder that their works aren’t just retro curiosities. They in fact make for an improbably contemplative respite from all the polychromatic absurdities that engulf us these days. 

   “For that is the power of the camera: seize the familiar and give it new meanings, a special significance by the mark of a personality.” – Alfred Stieglitz

“Once you really commence to see things, then you really commence to feel things.” – Edward Steichen

“It is one thing to photograph people. It is another to make others care about them by revealing the core of their humanness.” – Paul Strand

“The camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh.” – Edward Weston

“It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera… they are made with the eye, heart and head.” – Henri Cartier-Bresson

  These monochromatic manipulations of light certainly do illuminate the past in an important, historic way. But they’re even more fully and truly realized by the act of our intentional seeing, wherein they acquire a compelling new presence in our now.

   PHOTOS, from top: 1. MGM Studios, 1939 by Edward Weston / 2. Pepper No. 30 (1930), by Edward Weston / 3. Blind Woman (1916), by Paul Strand / 4. Oil Refinery, Tema, Ghana (1963), by Paul Strand / 5. Marlene Dietrich (1931), by Edward Steichen /6. Equivalent, Mountain and Sky, Lake George (1924), by Alfred Stieglitz / 7. Moonrise, Mamaroneck, NY (1904), by Edward Steichen