Black & White & Living Color

Photography changes everything.

With few exceptions, movies were almost always black and white well into the 1950s. They depended on shadows and contrasts to create a graphic mood that was part carefully crafted visual, part imaginary shared memory,   

Newspapers didn’t introduce color printing generally until sometime in the 1980s. Prior to that, color was reserved for the comics, also known as the “funny papers” – oh, the irony. Everything else was black and white and crisp and graphic and powerful...and impactful.

Black and white imagery gave a subject weight. Historic presence. It, whatever the “it” was, existed at a different time. Whereas, color imagery, even though styles continually change, still carries a could-have-been-yesterday feeling. 

So that, even when we draw parallels to something from the 1930s or 40s – let’s say sports or fashion or, oh, I don’t know, the rise of a fascist movement – the imagery let’s us look at the past reference  and think, “But that was such a long time ago and everything was so different then. Look how different it looks. That was nothing like today.” And there’s a weird false comfort in that. Because those cold, gray days in the photography of the late 30s, that set a perfect stage for group complacency and impending doom, were actually bright sunny days with blue skies and  trees with green leaves...just like now, just like wherever you are.

Everything old is new again, we’ve just increased the saturation. And has there ever been a more disturbing thought?   

“Color is distracting in a way, it pleases the eye but it doesn’t necessarily reach the heart.” 

– Kim Hunter.