What is it about black and white that makes a photograph special?

Savage, Steven E., Powdered Cannon, West Orange, NJ, 2008
Originally uploaded by Steve Savage

Well, that is a pretty personal question, and the chances that my answer will entirely satisfy those who are skeptical about this medium are very poor indeed. Still, I believe that there are certain universal truths about black and white which make it a perfect communication vehicle for some, while it alienates others. Among those truths are: 1) It forces us to see things in a surreal way; 2) It forces us to concentrate on tone, line, shape, composition, focus, perspective, and other artistic fundamentals, without the "benefit" of color to distract us; 3) It causes us to look more carefully at "ordinary" items and places, which we would normally ignore or overlook; and 4) It can take images out of the realm of "snapshot" and into the realm of art because of all of these reasons.

By way of example, consider my image, Powdered Cannon. Even though this image was shot with medium format professional camera, and was technically sound in terms of lighting, focus, composition, and every other critical in-camera consideration, and even though my son is a really cute little boy (yes, I said it!) in color, this image is not really more than a nice snapshot. Once, however, I stripped away the burden of seeing a mischievous boy in living (read "ordinary") color, and once I tweaked the contrast and the brightness, and filtered certain channels on the grayscale, this image took on new life. Suddenly, this is art.

Suddenly, we are comparing the subtle differences between the dark tones on Cannon's face with the ever-so-slightly lighter tones on his shirt (as filtered through a nice layer of baby powder. Suddenly, rather than being distracted by the many colors of the rug in the background and on the left of the photo, we are mesmerized by the slightly-less-focused geometric pattern that surrounds him. The same principle applies to the brown cabinet door which is rendered as a series of vertical lines, again slightly out-of-focus.

Instead of being annoyed at yet another too-cute-to-be-interesting photo of somebody's kid, we can evaluate this as a revisitation of all of our childhoods. Cannon becomes the universal child, and I can (none-too-meekly) speak of my lucky image as "art." And everybody wins...