Quoted By:
>So the decision basically comes down to technical matters? The difficulty in making a satisfactory color print is the main obstacle? Does that same difficulty effect your decision to print b/w in a traditional darkroom? Thankfully you are one of the few people still working that way. I'm curious if you can explain why.
Difficulty isn't quite the right word. Printing b/w is difficult. So is developing all the film you've ever exposed yourself. Color materials are slightly disappointing which is a different experience than encountering difficulty. I really admire my friends in what were for me the olden days who had to make their color prints using slow-going tubes - this was before color processors. Their prints all shifted to yellow in less than a decade but they were pursuing color photography because it was exciting, because the b/w world was well-known and continuing working in that vein seemed boring to them. Now color is the norm and perhaps we are reaching a point of over-saturation with it. In oil painting, the artist has a true involvement with the choices of color. In color photography, there is much less involvement; much of the work you see in galleries is outsourced and it shows.
Color photography is more about color than it is about light (though I am on dangerous ground trying to untangle the two). If you suspect that this world might be an illusion, then b/w does us the favor of stripping away one of the veils of our illusion. I wonder if color photography can ever produce work as profound as Atget's or Evans'.
