Anyone who doubts the relevance of black and white in photography now that almost all of us shoot in digital colour should take a look at the selection of pictures on the New York Times ‘Lens’ blog by Magnum photographer Christopher Anderson from his new book on Venezuela, Capitolio. You can see more of his fine work, both in black and white and colour, on the Magnum site.
The feature on ‘Lens’ by Simon Romero tells you more about the streets of Caracas, surely one of the more difficult places in the world to work, and also about the photographer, so I won’t write more here. Just don’t miss it.
However, as well as great work like this, I do see rather too much black and white photography that I look at and think that it was shot in colour and surely would have been better shown in colour. These days almost all photographers do start with colour – on digital compacts and phones – before taking up photography seriously, and although may take courses that force them to do at least some work in black and white, few get the kind of experience with working with it that we used to back in the days before digital and when newspapers and many magazines were largely or entirely monochrome.