Quotes & Sayings About Black & White Photography

To some extent, the cult surrounding black-and-white photography is based on nostalgia. — Rene Burri

Black and white photography is truly quite a 'departure from reality', and the transition from one aspect of visual magic to another was not as complete as many imagine. — Ansel Adams

I believe that the essence of photography is black and white. Color is but a deviance. — Sarah Moon

In the years that I could not see him, I came to know my father through the medium of photography. My perceptions of him were forged on black-and-white squares that stole an instant out of history and immortalized it between the pages of a family album. When I summoned up the image of the man, it came to me frozen, black-bordered, flat. He stood pale above the creases of his uniform, framed in the foamy wake of some ship, drops of sunlight caught in the buttons on his jacket. He winked at me from the liberty ports of countless exotic places. In an atrocious hand he scrawled stilted, affectionate words to the stranger that bore his name and his features, telling of adventures far away, misbehavings under suns hotter than that which shone over the Greater German Reich. — Miles Watson

In fact, I probably learned more about photography from studying black-and-white photography in those magazines [Look Magazine and LIFE Magazine] than I did from watching movies here. That's the truth. — Vilmos Zsigmond

The prejudice many photographers have against colour photography comes from not thinking of colour as form. You can say things with colour that can't be said in black and white ... Those who say that colour will eventually replace black and white are talking nonsense. The two do not compete with each other. They are different means to different ends. — Edward Weston

In some sense, list-making is to mind-mapping as black and white photography is to color photography. Both are good, both are useful. One gives you precision and clarity; the other gives you a broader spectrum of potential beauty, as well as access to otherwise-unseen features. — Anonymous

Black and white are the colors of photography. To me they symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair to which mankind is forever subjected. — Robert Frank

The eye should learn to listen before it looks. — Robert Frank

In the history of photography, we have many masterpieces in terms of black and white books. You have Bresson's 'Decisive Moment,' Frank's 'The Americans' ... many masterpieces. But there is nothing to this caliber in color. Well, I think I'll waltz with my muse and hope that I might be able to produce something on this order in color. — Ralph Gibson

When we concentrate on photography, we make it possible to see the walls of photographs in black homes as a critical intervention, a disruption of white control over black images. — Bell Hooks

I photographed the entire thing in color because to photograph it in black and white would be to keep it as a tragedy. Because there is a tragic element to photographing, in this case not war, but the collapse. It was just destruction. — Joel Meyerowitz

Love is the color in the black and white photography! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

One teacher told me that my work belonged in the trash. That day I ran out of the classroom and ended up in the library, where there happened to be a black and white photography exhibition of Robert Rauschenberg's photographs of the streets of New York. The subject of his photos were exactly what I was painting about. — Jose Parla

Not only does a lens distort forms, but the ordinary plate makes an unholy mess of colour in its tone relations. Yellow becomes black, and blue white. Black sunflowers against a white sky - what a travesty! — Walter J. Phillips

One very important difference between color and monochromatic photography is this: in black and white you suggest; in color you state. Much can be implied by suggestion, but statement demands certainty ... absolute certainty. — Paul Outerbridge

What the human eye sees is an illusion of what is real. The black and white image transforms illusions into another reality. — Ruth Bernhard

The Latin American photographer has the possibility, and the means, for naming the things of our world, for demonstrating that there is another kind of beauty, that the faces of the First World are not the only ones. These Indian, black, plundered white and mestizo faces are the first element defining the demographic content of our photography. — Edmundo Desnoes

One sees differently with color photography than black-and-white ... in short, visualization must be modified by the specific nature of the equipment and materials being used. — Ansel Adams

In black and white there are more colors than color photography, because you are not blocked by any colors so you can use your experiences, your knowledge, and your fantasy, to put colors into black and white. — Anders Petersen

Only in black and white can I see the design and textures. I don't consider color photography art. Black and white is an interpretation. Color is a duplication. — Clyde Butcher

In the '70s, in Britain, if you were going to do serious photography, you were obliged to work in black-and-white. Color was the palette of commercial photography and snapshot photography. — Martin Parr

In black and white you suggest, in color you state. — Paul Outerbridge

When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in Black and white, you photograph their souls! — Ted Grant

I am inspired by great food, theater, books, the beach, black-and-white photography, and great vocalists, like Dianne Reeves, Alice Smith, and Shirley Horn. I am inspired by my mentor Diana Castle, who is guiding me towards a truth and honesty in my life and work that I have always longed for. — Erica Tazel

Photography has always been associated with death. Reality is colorful, yet early photography always took the color out of reality and made it black-and-white. Color is life; black-and-white is death. There was a ghost hidden in the invention of photography. — Nobuyoshi Araki

Black-and-white photography, which I was doing in the very early days, was essentially called art photography and usually consisted of landscapes by people like Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. But photographs by people like Adams didn't interest me. — William Eggleston

Everything looks worse in black and white. — Paul Simon

It's almost too perfect - the poster girl for an illness in the early days of photography sees the world in black and white. — Siri Hustvedt