The Language Of Grey

“The photographer's palette is a thousand shades of gray.”
H.E. Clark

My oldest son is learning basic photography at senior school. He’s being taught to experiment with both colour and black and white. So far he doesn’t like his colour photos much. “Colour,” he said, “just doesn’t work for me. It doesn’t matter if I draw something or photograph it, the result is the same. Pictures are simpler, more beautiful in black and white.”

Weird huh? Now that I think about it, he’s probably right, but up until now, I must admit I’d always thought the exact opposite. I’d always associated beauty first and foremost with colour. Think about the millions of photos out there of beautiful sunsets or fantastic mountain scenes. Our brains’ perceptions of colour come with a hard-wired set of emotional responses. Green, for example is associated with lush nature and evokes a calming response, blue evokes a feeling of coolness and space, orange means warmth. But what emotion is associated with grey? In a black and white image there is no such pre-programmed psychological response. It’s more like a documentary where you, the viewer, looks in on the depicted mountain scene from the outside. You recognise the B+W photograph as an art-piece, a representation. Now contrast this with the same mountain photograph in colour, and you will suddenly see it very differently. Your brain will bring the scene alive in your mind and your imagination will instantly transport you to that mountain, you will feel the beautiful blue of the sky and the green grass surround you as if you were really there. So unlike a vibrant colour photograph, a B+W image creates a very definite psychological distance between the viewer and the image.

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But is a B+W photograph simpler? Hmm. Yes…and no. A B+W image is simple and sophisticated at the same time. You have to study it, work at it in order to feel a reaction. There’s no instant automatic response of “ooh, that’s a pretty sunset!” Instead you have to think about the inner message within the image. There’s certainly a huge amount of mood and emotion to be had within the B+W image, but you have to engage your intellect before you feel it. You have to first understand and interpret all the different nuances that make up the hundreds of shades of grey.

Black and white photographs are subtler, more elegant, more alluring, they are an intelligent conversation rather than instant gratification. In the current digital age with millions of colour photos everywhere you look, they stand out easily in a sea of colour images. They ooze class, style, and evoke a sense of timelessness. They look older (even though they might have been taken only an hour ago) because early photography was exclusively B+W so there is an association with endurance and agelessness. Plus there’s also the element of permanence. B+W photos are thought to last longer before fading. O.K. with modern photographic technology that’s no longer true but photographers think they do, so they have a more lasting feel to them.

Many modern photographers argue that precisely because B+W photographs are designed to look old, they are therefore outdated, obsolete, even trite. Fine art photographers are often accused of wallowing in nostalgia, even faking their work to appear artistic simply because it is in B+W. “It’s easy to produce an arty photo of beauty,” the critics sneer. “Just snap a gorgeous woman and convert it to B+W, and hey presto, you have instant art!”

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Lady Lynx

However, for all this perceived simplicity, I would argue that good B+W photographs are actually harder to produce. How do you communicate the message of your image by using grey? Which emotion fits which part of the tonal range? You can’t just snap away blindly, hoping for the best. It takes skill and forethought to communicate in the language of grey. You’re not just recording a scene “as is.” You’re creating a mood, an ambience, a style. In that split second before you press the shutter, you have to imagine what an image is going to look like finished and printed, so as to judge how to use the light as a tool to capture that perfect shade of grey and thus capture the precise emotion you were looking for.

Yikes! Sounds complicated? That’s because it is. As a B+W photographer you have to be a highly talented clairvoyant. You have to see the future before it happens, which takes an immense amount of skill and forethought. When done successfully, the results can evoke a very powerful emotional reaction, and IMO that’s what makes B+W photography such an incredible artistic medium.

Am I making any sense here?

Well obviously not, because after reading this my son rolled his eyes and gave me one of his “Mother’s off on one of her arty-farty-ramblings again” looks.

“O.K. Smarty-pants,” I snapped. “Why do you prefer B+W over colour then?”

“Maybe I’ve just been living with you too long,” he replied tartly.

Is it me, or are teenagers getting bolshier nowadays?