Black'n'white
Nowadays photographs tend to represent a world in dazzling colors; a world in which the subjects often enough vanish behind their luscious colors. In such a world, is there still room for black and white photography?
My answer is a clear yes. Especially in a world of omnipresent, sometimes penetrating colors, black and white adds clarity to shapes, conciseness to portraits and timelessness to actions.
Black and white photography extracts the picture's message. It overbears the camouflage of colors and reaches the subject's real nature, the portrayed person's charisma or the location's attraction. The reduction to black and white boosts a picture's significance.
Due to its visual clarity and distinction, today black and white photography has a bigger effect than ever. In advertising, black and white is used to focus the attention of an audience sated with colors.
Without doubt most of the memorized photographs that impressed the world for years, even decades, are black and white. To this day many professional photographers still do black and white photography, and on the art market black and white photographs are highly prized. A strong feature of black and white photography is to omit the needless and to convey its message by shapes, light and shadows alone. Therein lies the intense communicative force of black and white photography.
On the other hand: Those not being able to hide behind a checkered color palette should have something to say; they should be able to express themselves. Whether or not I succeed... well judge for yourself.