I love black and white photographs as an art form. I think there are few strong reasons a monochrome photograph can be considered more “artistic” than a color photograph. I’m not saying that a color photograph is not artistic, compared to black and white photographs. There are a lot of amazing color photographs that I would love to hang in my home but there are a few things that black and white photography does easily that color can not.

Abstract
From the time a photographer trips the sutter release (if he/she is shooting BW film or a monochrome digital camera) the image is already an abstraction of the reality the photographer was photographing. Changing a scene or portrait from color to shades of gray makes our mind think differently about the image before us. It is an image of reality, a real thing we are familiar with, but its not real at the same time, because the color is stripped away.

We don’t see the real world in black and white so subconsciously our mind is telling us its not real, but something representing reality. Much like an impressionistic painting or a loose sculpture that makes our brain fill in the spaces, a black and white photograph makes us imagine what is missing.

Timeless
You may hear others, that are passionate about black and white photography, comment on how black and white photos have a “timeless” quality to them. By removing the color from the image it also removes the visual queue that our minds use to give us a reference in time. Colors used in fashion and home decorating change every year. A good monochrome image will remove all of the distractions that color introduces letting the viewer focus on the subject rather than on all of the other items a color image would present.

In this image of the motorcycle rider passing by at speed you really can’t tell if it was shot last week or 40 years ago. With the rider wearing pretty basic riding gear and no other frame of reference to when it was taken gives it a timeless quality.

It’s Only About The Light
Unlike color photographs, a monochrome photographer can control what the light is doing in the final image. In a color image if you burn down an area too much it just looks like that part if the image is under exposed. In a black and white photograph burning and dodging bring up the high lights and ads shadows where there were none. It really gives the artist tools to add drama to a monochrome image that is really hard to achieve with a color image.

In the image Among Giants, I saw an opportunity to capture a scene that had pretty flat light but I could manipulate the image in the dark room while I printed it, making it appear as if a ray of light was highlighting this little tree among the larger ones in the forest. This allowed me to have a vision for the the final print that takes it beyond a reproduction of the reality in front of the lens.