Quoted By:
>5. After the color revolution of the Seventies, working in black and white seems hazardous for fine arts photographers. You have to express your own, contemporary vision. When we look at your photographs it seems quite natural to see them in black and white. That’s a great conquest. Do you think that right now it is more difficult to work in black and white?
MS: Well, black and white requires a lot of hard work in the darkroom. You have to spend lots of time developing film, whereas a color photographer can just go to a lab and drop off the film because with color there's no real advantage to developing the film yourself. I often find myself developing film while my color photographer friends are off clubbing or skydiving or having their hair done. Also, it's rather grueling to make large-scale fiber-based silver-gelatin prints that are archival. In the old days, great b/w photographers like Helen Levitt (who set up a simple darkroom in her bathroom) or Brassai (who had a darkroom in his hotel room) would only make relatively small prints. They were principally making photographs for books. Nowadays, if you're trying to make large b/w prints for the wall, it really is a trickier proposition than making color prints for the wall. I'm talking about silver-gelatin prints. Digital ink prints do mute this discussion.
(Continued)
