This week’s blog features a black & white photograph, which is rare for me. It’s not that I don’t appreciate black & white photography. I do. Like so many, I was drawn into photography by the iconic landscape prints of Ansel Adams. Brett Weston’s abstract compositions inspire me. The nautical photography of W.R. MacAskill makes me long for simpler days. Black and white photography is classy. When you want to make an impression, you put on a tuxedo.
The reality is that I see black and white photography as an austere distortion. Our world is filled with a myriad of colors and hues. Why limit yourself? Crayola never came out with a two-crayon set of black and white. They came out with a box of 120 unique colors. There are 36 shades of blue alone. When I look at the sky, I see cerulean, cyan and cornflower. What a boring world this would be if our vision resolved everything to black and white. Would we still gaze in awe at a rainbow or the blaze of color projected in a sunrise? I suspect not.
In an increasingly more complex and intimidating world, we seem to have this need to simplify things into black and white. I believe that the current term in use now is “binary”. Rather than address subtlety or ambiguity, we find it easier to just separate the world into two distinct piles. Discussions in the media about race tend to be about black versus white. If you are not skinny you are fat. You are either straight or gay. If you don’t have the same faith you are a heathen. You are either from a red or a blue state. You are either like me or not. There is no acceptance for anything in between.
Although I am optimistic that in the upcoming election, we will see a change in the ideological leadership of this country, we must be careful not to simply oscillate 180 degrees. There is going to be a time of rebuilding that it is going to extend beyond a four-year administration. To make this country a more perfect union will require a New Reconstruction. It will be a movement by the people to respect difference. Although our leaders can point the direction, it is the responsibility of us, the citizens, to affect the change and heal the wounds.
On a close inspection, you will observe that there is no such thing as a black and white photograph. In actuality, it is composed of infinite shades of gray. Black is nothing more than the completely saturated form of gray. White is the devoid variation. When you put things in those terms, we are not so different are we?
