Why Black and White?
A Nikon F and a Sekonic light meter. A roll of Ilford HP5 inside. Photography can be pretty simple sometimes. Photo: Matthew Smeal
Anyone who knows my work will know that it’s mostly devoid of colour. I shoot in black and white—whenever I can—so the obvious question, and the one I get a lot, is why? I’ll try and unpack it.
Why do I shoot in black and white? Because I fell in love with it.
It’s really that simple.
There are technical aspects, like the inherent abstractness of black and white—we don’t see in black and white, so we are forced to ‘look’ at the image and engage with it, interpret it—and I know that is most likely what first grabbed me. But, for whatever reason, I just love it.
However, two things happened quite close together that laid the Dmax for my love of black and white photography.
Back in the day
Way back when in cinematography school, and before we were let lose with cine cameras and lenses bearing such exotic and coded names like Arriflex, Angenieux, CP-16, and Zeiss, we had to learn a little about framing, telling a story in several shots, exposure, and how not to waste film. And we needed to learn about the process: ISO/ASA, Dmax, dynamic range, middle grey, pushing, pulling, grain…
Soon there was an assortment of Pentax Spotmatics and K1000s, Nikon Fs and F2s, Canon AE1s, and Nikkormats in an assortment of models.
To do that, we used 35mm SLR cameras. We each had to bring our own: mine, a Pentax Spotmatic with 28mm, 50mm and 135mm screw-mount lenses, borrowed from my dad. Some already owned an SLR, others like me borrowed, and others scoured second-hand camera shops.
Soon there was an assortment of Pentax Spotmatics and K1000s, Nikon Fs and F2s, Canon AE1s, and Nikkormats in an assortment of models.
And we had to learn how to develop. We shot our rolls of Ilford FP4 and HP5 and made our way to the college darkroom where we loaded the film and souped it in ID-11. Magic happened. I began to understand that light would reflect off a surface, find its way through my lens and, when I clicked the button and the shutter opened for just a fraction of a second, be exposed onto the film lying in wait.
Chemicals took that latent image, converted the silver halide crystals to metallic silver, and left me with a negative image. Finding my way to the enlargers, I could turn that into a positive image, forever burned into the paper through a similar process.
Despite the complexity, there was something so pure in the process, but we soon moved into 16mm cine film and ¾ inch video tape, ¼ inch audio tape, and editing suites. Photography became cinematography.
Group f/64
One day in my third or fourth year, I sat down to channel surf on a lazy Sunday afternoon and chanced upon a photography documentary. The film was deep into a section on the Pictorialists. I was intrigued but hardly inspired by the soft focus and gaudy subject matter.
And I heard names for the first time that would soon become so familiar: Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, and…Group f/64.
The documentary then followed the historical course and revealed the light leak in the Pictorialist’s film holder – Straight Photography. I stared in awe at imagery so spectacular, so new (to me) and so intense.
And I heard names for the first time that would soon become so familiar: Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, and those from within a group that was showing how powerful photography could be as an art form in its own right – Group f/64.
Imogen Cunningham, Willard Van Dyke, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Sonya Noskowiak, Henry Swift, John Paul Edwards — and other associated members: Brett Weston, Preston Holder, Alma Levenson, Consuelo Kanaga. The names of giants.
I had never seen anything like it. I had never seen such emotion conveyed in a photograph. I had never thought of photography as art. I had not, by that time, seen the work of Group f/64.
But the minutiae of Imogen Cunningham’s magnolias; the abstracts of Brett Weston’s dunes, the forms of Edward Weston’s peppers and shells, the majesty of Ansel Adams’ landscapes mesmerised me.
The name of the group derived from the smallest aperture available on a lens—smaller apertures giving the greatest depth-of-field and ensuring as much of the image would be in as sharp focus as possible.
It was these ‘qualities of clearness and definition’—qualities that only the medium of photography could portray through sharply detailed images—that defined the group’s purpose.
Yet it was these same qualities that the Pictorialists were trying to hide through their use of soft focus lenses, coloured and textured papers, and even scraping paint brushes across wet photographic emulsion to imitate a painter’s brush strokes.
Later I read the group’s manifesto and this line in particular: ‘The members of Group f/64 believe that photography, as an art form, must develop along lines defined by the actualities and limitations of the photographic medium, and must always remain independent of ideological conventions of art and aesthetics that are reminiscent of a period and culture antedating the growth of the medium itself.’
…photography should not try and emulate other art forms, but stand on its own.
It was a direct slap in the Pictorialist’s face but Group f/64 was saying that photography was a medium strong enough in itself. They were saying that photography should not try and emulate other art forms, but stand on its own.
Group f/64 were determined to show how expressive photography could be within ‘the limitations and actualities of the photographic medium’. And they did it in spades.
On my own Straight Photography quest and channelling Weston’s dunes. Photo: Matthew Smeal
I reacquainted myself with photography, bought as much HP5, FP4 and Pan-F as I could afford, bought a developing tank, found an unwanted enlarger at a closed-down school, and started photographing.
Pentax became Nikon and finally a Mamiya 6x7 for fine art work. While I somewhat regrettably never moved into view cameras, working slowly in medium format with the Mamiya, brought immense joy; the 6cm x 7cm format giving me 10 shots per roll of 120 film, and a negative almost five times that of 35mm. The detail was stunning.
Colour photography has never evoked the reactions in me that black and white photography has, and that crosses all genres from fine art to photojournalism to 1960s fashion to editorial. My brain simply rewired and I now see and feel in a grey scale.
Maybe I’m a Luddite, maybe I resist change, maybe I exude the virtues of ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. But artists develop their oeuvre over time; they find their style, their subject matter, their process, their vision. And they respond.
I became enamoured with the work of photojournalists—McCullin, Burrows, Page—their black and white images exposing a humanity within the brutality.
Black and white straight photography was what made me sit up and stare mesmerised into the TV screen. As the son of a television producer, I had been around cameras and studios all my life. As a cinematography student, I had an interest in cinema and storytelling. But nothing spoke to me the way black and white photography did.
Following on from Group f/64, I became enamoured with the work of photojournalists—McCullin, Burrows, Page—their black and white images exposing a humanity within the brutality. They showed the horrors of war to the world, while showing photographers and newspaper and magazine editors what could be done with simple cameras and black and white film.
Ansel Adams and Edward Weston were keen on visualisation and whenever I see a potential image in front of me, I see a finished print in front of me – shining white to the deepest black.
In the image below—which I took in Uganda in 2007—I remember visualising the background as jet black, the girl’s pink dress rendered as off-white contrasted against the background.
The image is exactly how I pictured it my mind.
I’m not sure if a portrait like this would be as powerful if shot in colour. Photo: Matthew Smeal
Today
Film is still my preferred way of working but the time, the expense and the difficulty in sourcing film, paper and chemistry makes it difficult. A compromise is shooting film and scanning negatives.
My cameras have largely remained simple too: I am more likely to grab my Nikon FM3A than anything else, save maybe my Nikon F with its simple viewfinder and no light meter. My trusty Sekonic light meter or ‘Sunny 16’ [on a bright sunny day, in the middle of the day, your ‘average’ exposure will be f/16 @ 1/ISO — you can then adjust as needed for more or less exposure, more or less depth of field, or faster or slower shutter speed] will do.
I have often said that the three ‘features’ a camera needs are focus, aperture and shutter speed. The rest is marketing.
In this digital age I have two Nikon D750s. They are incredible cameras for both stills and video and I love that I can use my Nikkor AI-s lenses on them. For underwater I use an Aquatech Base housing.
The D750 is a superb camera but alas, is now superceded and any underwater accessories specific to the D750 have long been discontinued. Good thing I have a 35mm Nikonos V.
The underwater world is somewhere we have become so used to seeing in colour. But underwater photography in black and white can give a very different perspective to the beauty beneath. Photo: Matthew Smeal
I have often said that the three ‘features’ a camera needs are focus, aperture and shutter speed. The rest is marketing. A camera is nothing more than a painter’s brushes or a sculpture’s chisels.
There’s an easy enjoyment to creating with a camera: wandering the hills or beaches with a roll or two of film…
Photography by its scientific and technical nature is complex. But black and white photography simplifies everything for me, it reduces everything to a very basic form and allows me to see. The complexity of colour has been removed and I am left with a starkness of form that I find so appealing.
As my equipment has simplified, so too the process. I have largely settled on Ilford HP5 film and Ilford ID-11 developer. Sometimes I use FP4 with Rodinal. But mostly it’s HP5, bulk loaded into the same little canisters I’ve had for years.
There’s an easy enjoyment to creating with a camera: wandering the hills or beaches with a roll or two of film, a lens or two in a bag, and a couple of filters in your pocket. Thinking through your framing, your exposure, your depth-of-field, visualising the finished print.
I like that I can sit on my bed with a dark bag and load a 100 foot roll of HP5 into a bulk loader and wind off 17 rolls of film. I like that I can go out and photograph and come home and spend hours in my darkroom (laundry), mixing chemicals, developing film and doing something similar to what so many before me have done.
Black and white photography still makes me stop. It makes me look and it makes me think. And isn’t that what it’s all about?