Black and White Photography

Yuka Nojima
Black and White Photography
Dissertation, MA in Communications Studies
1 September 2003
Black and White Photography
Table of Contents
I Introduction　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　
II Review of the Literature
III Examination of Black-and-White Photography　　　　　　　　　　

1 Colour Photography
2 Semiotics and Psychology 　　　　　　　　
3 Documentary Photography
4 Art Photography
5 Advertising Photography
IV Conclusion
Bibliography　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　
I Introduction
This dissertation will examine the use of black and white photography, its
significance, and its difference from colour photography. Why is black-and-white
photography still popular? What do we see in black-and-white photographs?
What is the difference between black-and-white photography and colour
photography? This dissertation intends to answer these questions.
Since the invention of photography, people have been seeking for the way to
capture the natural colours. Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, the inventor of
heliography, told his brother Claude about his desire to fix the colours, and
Daguerreotypists would colour the plates by hand.1 Since then, there have been
remarkable progress in the techniques of colour photography, and today, colour
photographs are prevalent. However, even with all the technologies for colour
photography, we still use black and white photography. Most digital cameras
have black and white effect and black and white films are still sold a long time
since the invention of practical (both in price and usability) colour photography.
For instance, the sales of black and white films in Japan were 8800 million yen in
1970, 6700 million yen in 1975, 9500 million yen in 1980 and 7700 million yen
in 1985.2 Even disposable cameras have black-and-white or monochrome
versions.3
An article from Wall Street Journal of the 17th of October in 1989 tells us the
reviving popularity of black-and-white photography: stylish magazine
advertisements in black-and-white photography, portrait orders in black-and-
white and black-and-white photography classes full of students. The article says
that sales of black-and-white film had been declining steadily since the 1960s
until 1988, when the sales increased 5 percent for increased use in advertising
and other commercial applications (processing of black-and-white commercial
film raised 24 percent to 18.7 million rolls in 1988), and that nearly 15 percent
of the Kodak sales are of black-and-white film in 1989.4
1
Beaumont Newhall, The History of Photography: from 1839 to the present
(New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 5th edn, 1986), p. 269.
2
Photo Market 2002 (Tokyo: Photo Market, 2002).
3
Disposable cameras for black-and-white photography from Konica were
marketed only from September 1995 to July 1999 due to the poor sales, but
from September 2001, disposable cameras for monotone photography have
been successfully marketed.　Personal correspondence with Isao Takatori
(Konica Japan) on the 18th June 2003.
4
Peter Pae, ‘Black-and-White Photos Develop Fans – Use in Ads Lifts Snaps’
Appeal After Long Fall’, in Wall Street Journal (New York: October 17, 1989,
AGFA holds a black-and-white photo contest each year, and also in general
photo contests held my AGFA, almost 40 percent of winning photographs are
black-and-white, except the contests with the themes ‘Colour’, and ‘Landscape’,
where 3 out of 20 were in black-and-white.
This dissertation will investigate the significance of black-and-white
photography and examine why people still use monochrome images.
First it will describe the development of colour photography, and how
photographers have considered colour photography.
Then we will examine the semiotics of colours: what black-and-white
photography connotates. Gunter Kress and Theo van Leeuwen’s theories on the
grammar of visual design and the grammar of colour5 will be utilised, and it will
be argued that black and white, as colours themselves, have been used in
formal occasions, and thus culturally connotate authority and seriousness. It
will also examine how the absence of colour can contribute to the focus on
shapes and forms mainly applying Rudolf Arnheim’s theories based on Gestalt
psychology.6
Then we will look at three types of photography where black-and-white seems
to be often employed with differentiation from colour photography. Those three
genres are documentary photography, art photography and advertising
photography.
The section of documentary photography examines why we tend to connect
documentary photography with black-and-white. Most pictures in newspapers
and text books are in black-and-white. This is partly due to its low price, but it is
also because of its connotation. Black-and-white photography seems more
suitable to depict war or natural disaster because of its connotation of history,
while vivid colour photography conveys immediacy of the events. Those
documentary photographs which could reveal our demonic curiosity, as
Jonathan Friday argues,7 look less crude in black-and-white photography. There
is a need to report wars and publicise famines and other problems, as in the
case of Farm Security Administration, in order to gain more concern from
Eastern edn), p. 1.
5
Gunter Kress and Theo van Leeuwen, Reading Images: The grammar of Visual
Design (London: Routeledge, 1996) and ‘Colour as a Semiotic Mode: Notes for a
Grammar of Colour’, in Visual Communication, vol. 1, no. 3 (2002), pp. 343-368.
6
Rudolf Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception (London: Faber and Faber, 1969)
and Film as Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957).
7
Jonathan Friday, ‘Demonic Curiosity and the Aesthetics of Documentary
Photography’, in British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 40, no. 3 (2000), pp. 356-375.
people, and in some cases naturalistic colour photographs may be considered
too sanguine. Black-and-white photography, because of its absence of sensory
colour, seems more suitable for earnest documentary. Also, while naturalistic
colour photography suggests immediacy and particularity, black-and-white
photography tends to generalise and conceptualise the subject-matter because
of its detachment from reality due to its absence of colour, and thus is more
suitable for documentary photography.
Art photography is another genre where we often see black-and-white
photographs. There are a lot of amateur photographers who prefer black-and-
white photography, partly because the development process is simpler than the
colour process, but mostly because of their belief in aesthetic value of black-
and-white photography. Here we will look at Pierre Bourdieu’s argument on the
distinction of aesthetics among different socio-cultural classes,8 and also Kress
and Leeuwen’s coding orientations theory.9 In modern society, higher education,
which has been the privilege of higher socio-cultural classes, stresses on
abstraction. Black-and-white photography is less realistic and naturalistic, and,
as Arnheim argues, it emphasises shapes and forms, thus can be considered as
more abstract than colour photography. Therefore, black-and-white photography
can be regarded more intellectual and more demanding in terms of aesthetic
than colour photography, which can be considered to give gratification for
popular taste. Nature photographs, for instance, are often in colour for travel
guides, while renowned photographers such as Ansel Adams often employ
black-and-white photographs for their aesthetic expression of scenery. Also
portraits exhibited in museums are often in black-and-white while portraits in
family albums after the marketing of low-priced colour photographs are more
often in colour.
Then in the section of advertising photography, the argument will focus on the
advertisement for fashion, especially for perfumes. As Judith Williamson
contests, there is practically no difference between brands of product and the
advertisements’ role is to differentiate particular product from others by
creating image around it.10 Black-and-white photography, with its connotation of
high art, enhances this differentiation.
8
Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste
(London: Routeledge & Kegan Paul, 1979) and Photography: A Middle-brow Art
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996).
9
Gunter Kress and Theo van Leeuwen (1996).
10
Judith Williamson, Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in
Advertising (London: Marion Boyars, 1978).
The conclusion will be that black-and-white photography, because of its
absence of colour, have more disparity from reality, which adds the
abstractness and sense of history and authority, leading to conceptualisation
and aestheticisation of the subject-matter.
As regard to the method applied, the inquiry will be essentially theoretical,
using references from literature and examples of photographs.
II Review of the Literature
In this chapter, first we will review theories on photography focusing on

functions and intentions that will be linked to the differentiated roles of colour
and black-and-white photography, and then we will look at arguments on black-
and-white photography.
There are various approaches to study photography: historical, sociological,
aesthetical, technological, and so on. Here, the review will focus on the
functions of photography.
Roland Barthes, in La Chambre Claire, observes that photography can be the
object of three practices, and he names these three l’Operator, le Spectator,
and le Spectrum.11 L’Operator is a photographer, le Spectator is those who look
at photographs, and le Spectrum is what is photographed, the referent. Here,
after Barthes’s division of photographic intentions, we will look at the functions
of photography in three practices: the functions as we take photographs, the
functions as we look at photographs, and functions that photography compels
us.
The first functions are related to the intentions we have when we photograph
some objects, and we will examine Pierre Bourdieu’s theory on social function of
photography,12 and Susan Sontag’s argument.13 The second is related to
aesthetic appreciation of photography. It is what we do when we look at
photographs, as Bourdieu examines functions within each genre and distinction
of aesthetic judgement according to socio-cultural strata.14 The third is
11
Roland Barthes, La Chambre Claire: Note sur la Photographie (Paris:
Gallimard, 1980), p. 22. My translation.
12
Pierre Bourdieu, Photography: A Middle-brow Art, trans. Shaun Whiteside
(Cambridge: Polity Press, paperback edn, 1996).
13
Susan Sontag, On Photography (London: Penguin Books, 1979).
14
Bourdieu (1996), and Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste,
trans. Richard Nice (London, Melbourne and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1979).
connected to the specificity of photography’s relation to reality. The objects in
photographs are often considered to have special quality different from the
objects in other visual representational arts such as paintings, and this quality
changes our perceptions of reality. Walter Benjamin examines mechanical
reproduction and art,15 Susan Sontag contests that photography gives us visual
guidance,16 and Barthes analyses the characteristics of photographic message.17
Barthes’s arguments are related to how we perceive, or decode (his preferred
term), photographic messages. Therefore, we will look at Barthes’s arguments
in relation to le Spectator as well as to the specificity of photographic referent.
What is important to us in those arguments is the possibility of black-and-white
photography playing different roles than colour photography in some functions
or intentions: it may reinforce the function, emphasise the distinctions or reduce
the effect.
L’Operator
Pierre Bourdieu, in Photography: A Middle-brow Art,18 emphasises the social
function of photography and sees the significant correspondence between
introduction of photograph into the ritual of the grand ceremonies of family life
and the rise of the social importance of those ceremonies. Photographic
practices internalise the social function and it solemnises and immortalises the
high points of family life, thus reinforces the integration of the family group.
Therefore, even though there is a difference of photographic activities between
rural areas and urban areas, the function conferred upon the photographic
image remains the same: the emphasis is on the picture produced rather than
on the means of producing it, and the photographic images are not of
individuals but of their social roles. Photography captures the moment and
symbolises it: it transforms the ‘good moments’ into ‘good memories’.19
Terence Wright also argues the significance of theory of representation in
practicing photography, saying ‘all photographers will most likely have
expectations that the camera will produce a certain sort of image that will fulfil
15
Walter Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, in
Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (London: Jonathan Cape,
1970), pp. 219-253.
16
Sontag (1979).
17
Roland Barthes, ‘The Photographic Message’ (1961) and ‘Rhetoric of the
Image’ (1964) in Image Music Text, trans. Stephen Heath (London: Fontana,
1977).
18
Bourdieu (1996).
19
Bourdieu (1996), p. 27.
their expectations to a greater or lesser degree.’20 He cites an instance of the
parent taking a snapshot of a child on holiday and contests that he will have
certain expectations with regard to the outcome of the image, and an idea of
the intended audience, and try to make a photograph that will ‘express the
socially acceptable image of a happy holiday’.21 As he argues, the criteria of the
evaluation of photographs are derived from an underlying theoretical standpoint
and it determines the anticipated outcome that will be subject to certain
traditions, codes and conventions of visual representation.　
Susan Sontag, on the other hand, examines the psychology in the process of
producing photographs as well as the intention of capturing the moment to
serve social roles. She says that photography is mainly practiced as a social
rite, a defence against anxiety, and a tool of power. She examines why people
tend to take more photographs in travelling, and contests that taking
photographs is a way of certifying experience offering evidence that the trip
was made, but also a way of refusing it at the same time, by limiting experience
to a search for the photogenic, by converting experience into an image, a
souvenir. Taking photographs also eases the feelings of disorientation
experienced during travels by giving shape to experience. Photography gives
tourists something to do “like a friendly imitation of work”.22 Thus having a
camera transforms one person into something active while the others remain
passive in front of events. The photographer both looks and preserves, and use
camera to take possession of the places they visit.
Daniel J. Boorstin argues the intention of l’Operator in his book, The Image: A
Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, in relation with our confusion of what is
original and what is a copy of experience. He says that photography enables
mechanically adept amateur to produce a kind of “original”. ‘Using a camera,
every man can feel somehow that what he has made is “his” image, even
though it has almost nothing of him in it.’23 Halla Beloff also argues that, as
social life becomes more fragmented and anonymous and the more fragile our
identity, the more we need to express ourselves in photographs and reinforce
our identity “to show that we exist” and “to show that we can create something
20
Terence Wright, The Photography Handbook (London and New York:
Routeledge, 1999), p. 9.
21
Wright (1999), p. 10.
22
Sontag (1979), p. 10.
23
Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (New York:
Vintage Book, 25th Anniversary edn, 1992), pp. 170-171.
in photograph.”24
Beloff also says that “photography come in three kinds: art photography,
documentary photography, personal photography,”25 and argues that
photographs are about information, aesthetics or emotion and that a good
photographs have all these three qualities.26 He contends that the photographer
is an agent who looks at the world and captures “some residue of their looking”
and that “their look depends on their temperament and personal experience,
but more importantly on the purpose for which they take the picture.”27
Hence, the functions of photography as we take photographs can be divided
into two: the one affecting practitioners’ psychology, and the other, namely
intended function for later use or for manifestation of his or her artistic ability.
The act itself of photographing confers calamity on the practitioners by
alienating then from their transitory surrounding and by giving them familiar
activities. The intention of photographing is to capture the moment, event or
scene in order to show it later, to remind oneself of one’s conquest, to serve
social expectations.
Le Spectator
Pierre Bourdieu examines the significance of genres in evaluating photographs.
When we look at photography, we expect ‘photography to give a narrative
symbolism, and as a sign or, more precisely, an allegory’.28 The main standard
to judge the value of photography is the fulfillment of the social function and
this social function is directed by the genres of each photograph: as Bourdieu
says, the purpose and raison d’être of photographs derive from its participation
within a genre.29 In other words, we have different criteria of value judgement in
respective genres.
However, Bourdieu believes that the system of aesthetic judgement varies
according to socio-cultural strata.30 The value judgement described above is
that of “the ‘popular aesthetic’, the festive aesthetic, that is, the aesthetic of
communication with others and communication with the world”.31 Opposed to
24
Halla Beloff, Camera Culture (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), p. 22.
25
Beloff (1985), p. 1.
26
Beloff (1985), p. 1.
27
Beloff (1985), p. 45.
28
Boorstin (1992), p. 91.
29
Boorstin (1992), p. 89.
30
Bourdieu (1979).
31
Bourdieu (1996), p. 94.
this, the aesthetic judgement of upper class is not bound to the function of
photography. In his book, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of
Taste, Bourdieu analyses a survey on what kind of subject-matters people from
each socio-cultural classes find beautiful and says, ‘a relatively large proportion
of the highest-qualified subjects assert their aesthetic disposition by declaring
that any object can be perceived aesthetically’, and people who have
completed several years of higher education ‘tend to consider that anything is
suitable for beautiful photography’32 while people from lower socio-cultural
classes evaluate beauty of photography according to the social function it fulfils.
We also perceive photography as message, as in documentary photography
and advertisements. This process involves the functions of le Spectrum, the
referent of photographs. As Terence Wright argues photographic reality,
photographs are products of particular culture and “are only perceived as real
by cultural convention: they only appear realistic because we have been taught
to see them as such.”33 Thus way we perceive and decode photographs is
closely related to the function of le Spectrum. Therefore, before we study the
process of our photographic reading, we will examine the functions of le
Spectrum.
Le Spectrum
　　 Roland Barthes calls the object photographed le Spectrum, because it has
its linguistic origin related to “spectacle” and also it adds what all the
photographs have: the return of the dead.34 Susan Sontag also says that
photography is the inventory of mortality: it shows the vulnerability of lives
heading toward their own destruction, and this link between photography and
death haunts all photographs of people.35
Sontag also notes the relation between the past and photography. Like
Bourdieu says photography transforms good moments into good memories,36
Sontag says it offers instant romanticism about the present. The photographer
does not only record the past but also invents it. Photography is a reminder of
death and also an invitation to sentimentality. “Photographs turn the past into
an object of tender regard, scrambling moral distinctions and disarming
32
Bourdieu (1979), p. 39.
33
Wright (1999), p. 6
34
Barthes (1980), p. 23. My translation.
35
Sontag (1979), p. 70.
36
Bourdieu (1996), p. 27.
historical judgements by the generalized pathos of looking at time past.”37
The characteristic of photographic referent is, Barthes says, that the object was
necessarily real and it was in front of the camera: the object was there. This
characteristic of the photographic referent bears double position conjoint: of
reality and of past: it was there for sure, but it is not there anymore. 38
Photography, André Bazin says, “does not create eternity, as art does, it
embalms time, rescuing it simply from its proper corruption.”39
Walter Benjamin also examines the power of le Spectrum. He studies
photographic portraits including a photograph of a fishwife by David Octavius
Hill and says: “something remains that does not testify merely to the art of the
photographer … something demanding the name of the person who had lived
then, who even now is still real and will never entirely perish into art.”40 This
specificity of the photographic referent, a kind of simulacrum, the eidolon
emitted by the object41 confers denotative status on photography, as we will
look at Barthes arguments later in this chapter,42 and brings about arguments of
reality.
David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, New Haven Fishwife, ca. 1845.
Benjamin also argues mechanical production and the aura of the work of art.43
He argues that the presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of
authenticity. He compares manual reproduction and technical reproduction and
says that, while manual reproduction is usually considered as a forgery and the
original preserves all its authenticity, technical reproduction is “more
independent of the original,” and “can put the copy of the original into
37
Sontag (1979), p. 71.
38
Barthes (1980), p. 120. My translation.
39
André Bazin, ‘The Ontology of the Photographic Image’, in What is Cinema?
Volume I, trans. Hugh Gray (Berkeley: University of Californian Press, 1967), p.
14.
40
Walter Benjamin, ‘A Short History of Photography’, trans. P. Patton, in
Artforum, vol. 15, February (1977), reprinted in Alan Trachtenberg(ed.),Classic
Essays on Photography (New Haven, Leete’s Island Books, 1980), pp. 199-216,
p. 202. Benjamin compares the characteristics of portraits in painting and
photography. In traditional art, he argues, portraits are appreciated as
testimony to the art of painter and interests in the identity of the people
represented subside as the time goes by.
41
Barthes (1980), p. 22.
42
Barthes argues denotative power of photography in ‘The Photographic
Message’ and ‘Rhetoric of the Image’.
43
Benjamin (1970).
situations which would be out of reach for the original itself.”44 And these
characteristics cause confusion between the original and copy and thus
jeopardise the authority of the object, the aura.
Daniel J. Boorstin also examines the problem of reality in modern life, saying
“we believe in illusions because we suffer from extravagant expectations.”45 We
demand more illusions, “bigger and better and more vivid,”46 and vivid image
has come to overshadow pale reality: “The Grand Canyon itself became a
disappointing reproduction of the Kodachrome original.”47 In the age of mass-
production, the original loses its originality and the copy becomes more familiar,
and the uniqueness of originals and of copies is dissolved as colour mechanical
reproductions become cheaper and easier. And what is more, we enjoy “the
pleasure of deception.”48 He continues: photography enables amateur to
produce ‘a kind of “original”’49 and it confuses “our sense of what is original and
what is a copy of experience.”50
Susan Sontag says that photographs teach us a new visual code. They do not
only record reality, but they create interest by new visual design, and they
confer importance to things photographed. Photographs have become the norm
for the way things appear, and change the very idea of reality, and of realism.
The power of photography blurs the border of images and our understanding of
reality and makes it less plausible to reflect upon our experience according to
the distinction between images and things, between copies and originals. ‘The
force of photographic images comes from their being material realities in their
own right, richly informative deposits left in the wake of whatever emitted them,
potent means for turning the tables on reality – for turning it into a shadow.’51
Thus, an object photographed becomes a symbol and a shadow.
Halla Beloff also argues the power of photography to show the world and to
authenticate the world.52 He argues that photography is “shaped by our ideas,
influenced by our behaviour, defined by our beliefs about community,”53 and in
return it “influences our ideas and our behaviour, and defines our society” and
44
Benjamin (1970), p. 222.
45
Boorstin (1992), p. 4.
46
Boorstin (1992), p. 6
47
Boorstin (1992), pp. 13-14.
48
Boorstin (1992), p. 194.
49
Boorstin (1992), p. 170.
50
Boorstin (1992), p. 170.
51
Sontag (1979), p. 180.
52
Beloff (1985), p. 16.
53
Beloff (1985), p. 22.
“can radically transform our idea of what is real.”54　
Now there is a very subtle relation between reality and photography. As
exhibited above, photographs are believed to have the power to be evidence.
Barthes argues that this derives from characteristic of photography as a
message without code.
A photograph transmits the literal reality: although there is a reduction in
proportion, perspective and colour, there is no need to divide up the reality into
units and to constitute these units as signs, therefore no need to set up a code
between the object and its image. Barthes defines two types of message:
denoted message and connoted message. A denoted message is the analogon
of the reality itself, and a connoted message is the manner in which the society
communicates what it thinks of it. Photography’s pure status is denotative and
objective by nature. However, it is possible to connote a photographic message.
Barthes exhibits six kinds of connotation procedure: trick effects, pose, objects,
photogenia, aestheticism and syntax. Those procedures are based on the
photographic paradox of co-existence of the message without a code and the
message with a code: the connoted message develops on the basis of a
message without a code.55
Now how do we perceive this message from le Spectrum as le Spectator?

Barthes argues that even when the photographic image is heavily connoted,
people do not really pay attention to the connotation: they receive a connoted
message subconsciously, and they take it as if it were a denoted message. Thus
it is possible to give people subliminal message using photography’s power of
denotation. This power of denotation also works with text next to photographic
images: the verbal message seems to share in its objectivity, and the
connotation of language is ‘innocent’ through the photograph’s denotation.56
However, as Barthes examines the photographic message,57 rhetoric of the
image,58 and mythologies of culture,59 we subconsciously refer to our cultural
accretions in reading photography. As Beloff says, we bring a whole set of
54
Beloff (1985), p. 19.
55
Roland Barthes, ‘The Photographic Message’ (1961) in Image Music Text,
trans Stephen Heath (London: Fontana, 1977), pp. 15-31.
56
Ibid, p. 26.
57
Roland Barthes, ‘The Photographic Message’ (1961) in Image Music Text,
trans Stephen Heath (London: Fontana, 1977), pp. 15-31.
58
Roland Barthes, ‘Rhetoric of the Image’ (1964) in Image Music Text, trans
Stephen Heath (London: Fontana, 1977), pp. 32-51.
59
Roland Barthes, Mythologies (Paris: Seuil, 1957).
personal and social associations to a photograph and these ‘meanings’ conjured
up make up the perception60 and, as Terence Wright argues, photographs are
not ‘automatically realistic’ and the forces of culture constantly alter our
perception and understanding of photographs.61 He continues: “the value of
photography’s representational powers lies as much in the images’ historical
and cultural contexts as in any inherent properties of the photographic medium
itself. At the very least, our looking at a photograph, and our obtaining
information from it, is not as straightforward as we might have first thought.”62
This is especially true with advertisement photography as we receive the
connoted message of advertisement and the implied value of the advertised
object using a set of social and cultural associations yet we somehow believe in
the advertised reality, yet we are not fooled by advertisement: as
postmodernist thinkers argue, knowing “advertising is beyond the true and the
false,”63 we enjoy advertising as a “festival”64 and have the pleasure of
deception from it.
These are main arguments on photography and its functions in society. The
aim of this dissertation is to examine the specific roles of black-and-white
photographs in fulfilling those social and cultural intentions of photography.
Before the detailed examination of black-and-white photography, we review
arguments on intentions and connotations of colour and black-and-white
photography.
There is not much literature specifically on black-and-white photography, and it
is often mentioned in relation to documentary photography. Also some
commentators compare colour and black-and-white photography.
Graham Clark argues that “the ‘realism’ of photography is part of a structure of
illusion to which we accede,”65 and says that, especially in the traditional
documentary, “we equate black-and-white photographs with ‘realism’ and the
60
Beloff (1985), p. 18.
61
Wright (1999), p. 6.
62
Wright (1999), p. 7.
63
Jean Baudrillard, Revenge of the Crystal: Selected Writings on the Modern
Object and its Destiny 1968-1983, ed. and trans. Paul Foss and Julian Pefanis
(London: Pluto, 1990), p. 93.
64
Jean Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death, trans Ian Hamilton Grant
(London: Sage, 1993), p.79.
65
Graham Clark, The Photography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p.
23.
authentic”66 and “the presence of colour … lessens the sense of the
photograph’s veracity as an image and witness.”67 He argues that colour
detracts from a photograph’s ‘realism’ and reflects the act of interpretation
rather than of recording, as professional and art photographers use colour in a
deliberate way to draw attention to the medium or to imply a statement about
the subject.68 Siegfried Kracauer also says that natural colours recorded by the
camera tend to weaken rather than increase the realistic effect.69 　 Terence
Wright also argues “one of the expected characteristics of documentary
photography is the stark, grainy, black and white image.”70 As Clarks says
colour photographs are central to snapshots,71 Wright argues that colour
photography is associated with the amateur market and snapshot.72 He also
contends that the monochromatic image enhances the viewer’s imagination for
the colours that are not present in the photograph can be mentally filled in
through the process of perception.73
Wright’s argument that black-and-white photography encourages imagination
seems to be contradictory to Clark’s argument that colour reflects the act of
interpretation rather than recording. However, as Wright mentions Ernst Haas
being exception for his approach of formal experimentation,74 artistic formal
approach to colour invites us to interpret photographs. Wright also argues that
colour images do not “embody the harsh actuality demanded by such
documentary modes as the news photograph,”75 hence black-and-white
photography is more suitable for documentary recording. We will discuss the
different use of black-and-white and colour photographs in documentary, art
and advertisement in detail later in the following chapter, but first, we will look
at another argument on black-and-white and colour photography and then
conclude this review of the literature.
Ernst Haas, Rose, 1970

66
Clark (1997), p. 23.
67
Clark (1997), p. 23.
68
Clark (1997), p. 24.
69
Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (New
York: A Galaxy Book, 1965; orig. pub. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960). pp.
vii-viii
70
Wright (1999), p. 139.
71
Clark (1997), p. 23.
72
Wright (1999), p. 140.
73
Wright (1999), p. 139.
74
Wright (1999), p. 139.
75
Wright (1999), p. 139.
Halla Beloff, who argues that photograph is “something to do with physics and
chemistry and time travel, and social issues and identification – people and
things and what happened”76, examines the problem of black-and-white
photography in terms of Technics, naturalism/realism, history and association,
and psychology. Colour photography has more information and psychologically
rich, hence enhances pleasures and suitable for mercantile and amateur
photographs and conforms to pictures in the popular magazines while serious
photographers avoid and despise colour. In the technical aspect, photographers
have thought that they have more control over the optic values with black-and-
white photographs. Also, black-and-white photography seems to have
abstracted truth and to show truer essence by removing the surface gloss of
colour. Historically, founders of photography used black-and-white and therefore
it is associated with historical authorities while colour photographs first
appeared in magazines like Vogue and in travel brochures. Psychologically,
colour photographs give us sense of good cheer, the mundane world and
ordinariness while black-and-white photography has an austerity, an
abstractness and makes a visual object interesting and challenging by removing
itself from the mundane and presenting an element of translation or
codification.77
It seems that roles of black-and-white photography and colour photography

are differentiated and each has specific connotations in different genres of
photography. In the following chapter, we will examine particular usage of
black-and-white photography and its historical, cultural, social, semiotic and
psychological values different from those of colour photography. The intention
of this dissertation is to account for these differentiated functions of black-and-
white photography in our society.
76
Beloff (1985), p. 1.
77
Beloff (1985), pp. 92-94.
III　Examination of Black-and-White Photography
As exhibited in the introduction, even today with all the advanced techniques
of colour process, we still use black-and-white photography, and its usage and
function seems to be different from colour photography. In review of the
literature, we examined functions and intentions of photography, and the
purpose here is to examine how black-and-white photography can enhance or
lessen those functions and intentions and how different functions and intentions
are represented in colour and black-and-white.
Black-and-white photography is still used partly for economic and practical
reasons. Black-and-white photography is still cheaper to reproduce in books and
newspapers. Also some photographers feel that black-and-white photography is
easier to control. However, there are more historical, aesthetic and
connotational reasons for unabated application of black-and-white photography.
In the following sections, we will first look at the history of colour photography,
how photographers and thinkers considered of colour photography and how
historically colour and black-and-white photography have different
connotations. Then we will examine semiotics and psychology associated to
colour and black-and-white photography. We will look at theories of semiotics of
visual design, especially concerning colour, Gestalt psychology regarding visual
perception and other arguments on popular culture, and intend to account for
the differentiation between colour and black-and-white photography.
And then we will look at three different genres of photography: documentary,
art and advertisement photography. Categorisation of photography is
problematic, as Ansel Adams says: “Definitions of this kind are inessential and
stupid; good photography remains good photography no matter what we name
it.”78 However, here, we do not concern with the value of a particular
photograph. One photograph, for instance, can be produced for advertisement
or for newspaper article, but can be appreciated as art. Here, our focus is on
intentions and functions of photography in each stage. What specific intentions
does black-and-white photography have at the stage of production or editing?
What particular functions does it fulfil when it reaches to the audience? We
subconsciously relate photography to our cultural accretions, which are often
associated to the notion of genre. Therefore, it is effective to look at usage of
black-and-white photography (and colour photography) in those three
categories.
1 Colour Photography
In this section, we will examine the history of colour photography, how

photographers have considered it and what association it has had.
The inventions of colour photography start in the late nineteenth century. In
1850, Levi L. Hill, a Baptist minister and professional daguerreotypist in New
York announced his success in fixing the colour in the public press and
published Treatise on Heliochromy in 1856, but the process was not perfect
enough for general use.79 Ian Jeffrey contests that the first practical colour film
for amateurs and professionals came on to the market in 1935 and it became
widely available after 1945, and that many improvements from the 1940s
onwards ‘made possible printing of an unprecedented accuracy, and this in turn
encouraged a new interest in colour among art photographers. The
developments in commercial printing since the 1940s brought the work of
photographers within reach of a large new audience, and finally helped
establish it as a serious medium for art.’80
Until the process of colour photography was established and became available,
78
Ansel Adams, ‘A Personal Credo’ (1943) in Beaumont Newhall (ed.),
Photography: Essays & Images: Illustrated Readings in the History of
Photography (London: Secker & Warburg, 1981), pp. 255-261, p. 257.
79
Beaumont Newhall, ‘In Color’, in The History of Photography: from1839 to the
Present (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 5th edn, 1982), pp. 269-279.
80
Ian Jeffrey, Photography: A Concise History (London: Thames and Hudson,
1981), p. 245.
photographs had been coloured by hands. Henry Fox Talbot, the inventor of
Calotype, offered hand-coloured Calotypes and sold them for twice the cost of a
print in its original monochrome form, even though he was not enthusiastic
about the results.81 As James L. Enyeart argues, hand colouring of photographs
‘was part of the commercial bias that condescended to a public desire for
natural color images,’ and ‘those interested in the aesthetic potential of the
medium had less than enthusiastic thoughts about the introduction of such
color.’ 82
Even in those days, colour photography was related to commercialism and

demand from consumers and not to artistic expression of photographers.
Enyeart cites the statement of J. H. Croucher in an 1853 book about the
daguerreotype process. Croucher says that colour covers the fine delicate
outlines and exquisite gradations of tone of a good picture, and that such a
coating is barbarous and inartistic, and he criticises that the prevailing taste is
for coloured proofs and amateurs are ministering to this perverted taste. 83
Beaumont Newhall, citing John Towler’s article in Humphrey’s Journal of
Photography, also argues that the colour process was in demand but that there
were problems as well as the value of satisfying this need. Towler writes: ‘Good
taste, however, eschews much color; a vulgar taste seeks gratification of strong
contrasts, and hence of colors’ and says that it is ‘the part of business man in
the photographer to sacrifice all preconceived notions to the desires of his
customers.’84
Roland Barthes also expresses his dislike of hand-tinted daguerreotypes saying
that colour is applied later on the truth of black-and-white original image and
that colour is like make up applied on corpse.85 This is, of course, not the same
with the case of today’s colour photography where the original image is in
colour, but certainly related to the question of reality. James L. Enyeart
contends that the general public has seen photography as a means of capturing
81
James L. Enyeart, ‘Introduction: Quest for Color’, in Harry M. Callahan (ed.),
Ansel Adams in Color (Boston, London: Little Brown and Company, 1993), pp. 9-
32.
82
Enyeart (1993), pp. 12-13
83
J. H. Croucher, Hints on the Daguerreotype – Photographic Pictures
(Philadelphia: A Hart, Late Carey and Hart, 1853), p. 199, cited in Enyeart
(1993), p. 13.
84
John Towler, Humphrey’s Journal of Photography, vol. 14 (1862), p. 146, cited
in Newhall (1982), p. 269.
85
Gallimard, 1980), pp. 127-128. My translation.
reality while photographers have considered photography as either vessel of
truth (documentary) or an abstraction (personal interpretation). To the general
public, colour serves only to enhance the illusion.86
In 1903, the Lumière brothers invented Autochrome using the additive principle
and they were put on the market in 1907.87 This process, Enyeart says, offered
the equivalent of a colour transparency on glass with vivid colour “separated by
delicate soft edges created by the slightly granular texture of the emulsion” 88
and “raised hopes for truly aesthetic possibilities,”89 and the first public
exhibition in the United States of Autochrome was held in New York by Edward
Steichen and other photographers in 1907.90 However, the manufacture of
Autochrome discontinued in 1932 and additive processes were taken over by
subtractive processes,91 and Kodachrome was put in the market in 1935. In
1947 Eastman Kodak Company invited creative photographers, such as Edward
Weston, Ansel Adams, Charles Sheeler, Paul Strand, and Walker Evans, to
experiment with the then new 8 × 10 sheet film Kodachrome. Walker Evans
reproduced a portfolio of colour works by these photographers in the July 1954
issue of Fortune magazine and said of the colour medium that it was sill in its
infancy and argued that many photographers were “apt to confuse colour with
noise and to congratulate themselves when they have almost blown you down
with screeching hues alone – a bebop of electric blues, furious reds, and poison
greens.”92
Ansel Adams also argues that the first requisite for colour photographs was to
achieve realistic images. However, it was impossible to get a truly realistic
image and “a concept of pseudo-reality developed in both professional and
amateur work and color photographers seemed to revel in smashing, garish
color. “If you can’t make it good, make it red,” was more than a casual remark.
As the quality of equipment and materials advance the creative level does
not.”93
These criticisms were partly due to the popularist use of colour photographs at
that time. As Ansel Adams says, the tastemakers in colour photography are ‘the
86
Enyeart (1993), p. 13.
87
Newhall (1982), p. 276.
88
Enyeart (1993), p. 15.
89
Enyeart (1993), p. 14.
90
Newhall (1982), p. 267.
91
Newhall (1982), p. 267.
92
Enyeart (1993), p. 20.
93
Ansel Adams, notes (Adams Estate, March 4, 1983) cited in Enyeart (1993), p.
19.
manufactures, advertisers in general and the public with their insatiable
appetite for the “snappy snapshot.”’94 One of the few vehicles for the colour
photograph in the mid-twentieth century, as Terence Wright writes, was the
National Geographic Magazine, and in the 1960s the demand for colour
photographs increased by the circulation of such magazines as Life, Paris-Match
and Stern.95 Those major magazines “could afford the high cost of materials for
the process and provided the only practical venue for colour images,”96 but
were “not concerned … with whether or not the then extant processes
transgressed any philosophical questions of reality, integrity, or photographic
ideals,”97 and were only interested in fulfilling “the public’s attachment to living
color”98 in order to sell more publications. While serious photographers with
aesthetic or social intentions tend to choose black-and-white photography for
the imagination it enhances99 or for its “stamp of history,”100 commentators
such as Graham Clark101 and Halla Beloff102 argue, colour photography has been
associated with amateur photographs and popular magazines. In the 1960s,
colour photography “was seen as either a brash and cheap photography for the
masses or, on the serious side, was reserved for the glossy commercial image,
offering glossy images for glossy subject-matter.”103
However, there were some attempts for creative colour photography, as seen
in the case of Eastman Kodak in 1947 exhibited above. In the 1950s, also, some
photographers with reputation for their black-and-white photography including
Irving Penn, André Kertész, Walker Evans, Charles Sheeler, Paul Strand, and
Cecil Beaton experimented with colour. In 1951, Alexander Liberman, art
director for Condé Nast Publications, published a book on colour photography
with each of the photographs was accompanied by a statement by the
respective photographers.104 One of these photographers, Andre Kertész, argues
that the aesthetics of colour is associated to painting history while black-and-
94
Ansel Adams, notes, ‘Introduction to Color Book’ (Adams Estate, March 22,
1983) cited in Enyeart (1993), p. 13.
95
96
Enyeart (1993), p. 18.
97
Enyeart (1993), p. 18.
98
Enyeart (1993), p. 18. Original italics.
99
Wright (1999), p. 139.
100
101
Graham Clark, The Photography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
102
Beloff (1985).
103
Wright (1999), p. 140.
104
Enyeart (1993), p. 19.
white is pure photography.105 On the other hand, Edward Weston argues that the
prejudice against colour photography comes from not thinking of colour as
form.106 Beaumont Newhall says Waterfront, 1946 is the embodiment of
Weston’s aesthetic theory of colour as form. Here “our eye delights in the play
and contrast of the brilliant color fields of red, blue, and yellow,”107 and the
customary depth of field present in Weston’s black-and-white work has given
way to an emphasis on a flat plane.108
Edward Weston, Waterfront, 1946.
From the mid-1970s, some younger creative photographers with started to

“take a fresh look at colour.”109 They use colour to draw attention to the
medium, to imply a statement about the subject,110 as a mode of expression, or
for the formal experimentation.111 For instance, Ansel Adams is interested in
colour as a new tool for creative expression112 and argues that colour
photography can offer potential aesthetic experience if it is seen “as a means of
simulating reality, rather than recording it.”113
Yet, the problem of automatic photographic expression concerning colour
photography remains, as Brian Winston argues, “the history of the development
of colour film with its numerous different ‘brands’, its various distinct systems of
reproduction, reveals that colour photography is not bound to be ‘faithful’ to the
natural world.”114 Also, the criticism against colour photography has not
unconditionally given way to the possibilities of colour photography. For
instance, in 1969, Walker Evans argues that colour tends to corrupt
photography, and says “there are four simple words for the matter, which must
105
Alexander Liberman (ed.), The Art and Technique of Color Photography (New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1951), p. 44, cited in Enyeart (1993), p. 20.
106
Edward Weston, Modern Photography, December 1953, p. 54, cited in
Newhall (1982), p. 279.
107
Newhall (1982), p. 279.
108
Newhall (1982), p. 279.
109
Wright (1999), p. 140.
110
Clark (1997), p. 24.
111
Wright (1999), p. 139.
112
Enyeart (1993), p. 21.
113
Enyeart (1993), p. 28.
114
Brian Winston, Technologies of Seeing: Photography, Cinematography and
Television (London: BFI Publishing, 1996), p. 55. In this book, he argues that
colour films are made to best (not ‘faithfully’ but most pleasantly) represent the
tone of skin colour of Caucasian.
be whispered: colour photography is vulgar.”115 However, he allows one
exception “when the point of a picture subject is precisely its vulgarity or its
colour-accident through man’s hands.”116 Thus, colour photography still has the
stamp of kitsch popular culture for mass production and mass audience.
Also, from the 1980s, black-and-white came to revive, as Richard DeMoulin, the
general manager of Eastman Kodak Co.'s professional photography division
said, "The pendulum is swinging back to black and white." 117 Moreover, black-
and-white photography came to have specific connotations, especially in the
domain of advertising. For instance, Gap Inc. launched ad campaign featuring
black-and-white shots of Hollywood stars, artists and other well-known
personalities in the 1980s. The account manager for this campaign Richard
Crisman says that Gap wanted to highlight the individual rather than the
environment and that black-and-white enables us to do this better than
colour.118 And today Gap still often uses black-and-white photography for
Gap Advertisement with James Dean and Jack Kerouac
Gap Inc. Advertisement Campaign 2002
its advertisements, as do many other fashion advertisements. Marc L. Hauser, a

photographer who worked on a black-and-white advertisement photographs for
Stouffer Food Corporations’ Lean Cuisine also says that companies feel black
and white will convey a stronger statement.119 And this trend influenced portrait
photographs too. An article from Wall Street Journal on the 13 th of December in
2002 reports that J C Penny and Sears portrait studios began offering black-and-
white photos, and that 10% of customers choose black-and-white at Sears.120
The article continues: “It's all part of America's nostalgia boom, say retailers
115
Walker Evans, ‘Photography’, in Louis Kronenberger, Quality: Its Image in the
Arts (New York: Atheneum, 1969), p. 208, cited in Mark Haworth-Booth,
Photography: an Independent Art - Photographs From the Victoria and Albert
Museum 1839-1996 (London: V & A Publications, 1997), p. 175.
116
Ibid.
117
Eastern edn), p. 1.
118
Ibid.
119
Ibid.
120
Lauren Lipton, ‘Details: Black and White – Now Seen All Over’ in Wall Street
Journal (New York: Dec 13, 2002, Eastern edn), p. W. 14.
and photographers, as customers go for a look that's both edgy and classic.” 121
Black-and-white photographs can make housewives look like stars.122 And to
general public, black-and-white came to be more dramatic and it is not ordinary
like colour.123
Now that there is not much technical restriction in colour photography and it
has become so popular, black-and-white photography has come to be applied
with commercial intentions, to catch eyes, to startle, and to differentiate. And it
is even more interesting when we correlate minimalism in fashion in the 1980s
to this trend.124 　Black-and-white photography has become a part of fashion in
some cases.
Throughout the history of photography, there has always been aspiration for
naturalistic colour. In the early stage, when there were still technical restrictions
in colour process, black-and-white photographs were chosen for practical
reasons. Colour photography was less stable, more expensive, and had a
shorter shelf life than black-and-white.125 Today, the techniques of colour
photography are well established. Ansel Adams said before his death that if he
were young again he would be a colour photographer.126 The limitation of colour
process that used to restrict creative photographers fear of having less control
over their work is now removed, and there are more and more creative
photographers experimenting with the possibilities of colour photography.
Yet, we still use black-and-white photography. It is because, as Terence Wright
says, colour and black-and-white photography have different system of
representations: “It is not simply a matter of either mode being easier – each
has its own characteristics.”127 Colour and black-and-white photography have
different functions and connotations. We will examine this issue in three
different types of photography: documentary, art and advertisement
photography. Before these examinations, we will look at semiotics and
psychology concerning colour and black-and-white photography.
121
Ibid.
122
Appeal After Long Fall’ in Wall Street Journal (New York: October 17, 1989,
Eastern edn), p. 1.
123
Ibid. Here one customer says she chooses black-and-white portrait because
“it’s more dramatic. I show it to my friends, and they all say ‘wow.’ It isn’t
ordinary like color.”
124
Ibid.
125
Wright (1999), p. 145.
126
Enyeart (1993), p. 19.
127
Wright (1999), p. 145.
2 Semiotics and Psychology
This section will examine the semiotics of colour based on Gunter Kress and
Theo van Leeuwen’s theories on the grammar of visual design and the grammar
of colour,128 what association colour can have in our modern culture, and also
we will look at Rudolf Arnheim’s theories based on Gestalt psychology and
examine how the absence of colour can enhance some functions of two-
dimensional representation of three-dimensional world.129
Gunter Kress and Theo van Leeuwen argues problem of modality and reality in
Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design.130 As theories on cultural
semiotics argue reality is defined by culture, society and history, Kress and van
Leeuwen say that reality is in the eye of the beholder and that “the eye has had
a cultural training, and is located in a social setting and a history,” 131 and they
continue to explain different coding orientations as regard to visual modality
based on “culturally and historically determined standards of what is real and
what is not.”132
Kress and van Leeuwen exhibit four coding orientations: technological coding
orientations; sensory coding orientations; abstract coding orientations; and the
commonsense naturalistic coding orientation.133 The last one is the dominant
coding orientation everyone shares regardless of his or her education or
scientific-technological training. We all apply this mode when we, for example,
watch television or read popular magazines. And we apply sensory coding
orientations in certain kinds of art, advertising, fashion, cooking, interior
decoration, where the pleasure principle is dominant, and here “colour is a
source of pleasure and affective meanings,”134 while, in technological coding
orientation, colour is often useless for the scientific or technological purpose of
the image and thus has low modality. Socio-cultural elites, an 'educated person'
128
Gunter Kress and Theo van Leeuwen, Reading Images: The Grammar of
Visual Design (London: Routeledge, 1996), and ‘Colour as a Semiotic Mode:
Notes for a Grammar of Colour’, in Visual Communication, vol. 1, no. 3 (2002),
pp. 343-368.
129
Rudolf Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception (London: Faber and Faber, 1969)
and Film as Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957).
130
Kress and van Leeuwen (1996).
131
Kress and van Leeuwen (1996), p. 163.
132
133
Kress and van Leeuwen (1996), pp. 170-171.
134
or a 'serious artist'135 also apply abstract coding orientation in high art and in
academic contexts, where an image reduces the individual to the general and
the concrete to its essential qualities.136
As Kress and van Leeuwen argue, higher education in our society is “an
education in detachment, abstraction and decontextualization,” and we seek for
“a deeper truth ‘behind appearances’,”137 and we value “visual representations
which reduce events and people to the ‘typical’, and extract from them the
‘essential qualities’.”138 On the other hand, colour is often applied to appeal to
sensory qualities and “the emotive value of colour is sometimes seen as a
general characteristic of colour”139 – “colours are there to be experienced
sensually and emotively.”140 Black-and-white photography, because of its
absence of sensory, gratifying colour, seems to be more abstract and true to its
essence, and complies with expectation from higher education in our society.
Rudolf Arnheim also argues “colour produces essentially emotional experience,
whereas shape corresponds to intellectual control.”141 He argues in the chapter
on shape that vision is not a mechanical recording device or passive reception,
but “in looking at an object, we reach out for it.”142 Therefore shape requires
active response while in the case of colour, it gives “expressive impact” 143 and
we are passive receivers of stimulation.144 He also argues possibilities of film as
art,145 where he says that “by the absence of colors, of three-dimensional depth,
by being sharply limited by the margins on the screen, and so forth, film is most
satisfactory denuded of its realism,”146 and he contends that “the reduction of
actual color values to a one-dimensional gray series is a welcome divergence
from nature which renders possible the making of significant and decorative
pictures by means of light and shade.”147 Hence, black-and-white photographic
images, because of its absence of expressive colour, focus on shapes that
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
Rudolf Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception (London: Faber and Faber, 1969),
p. 325.
142
Arnheim (1969), pp. 32-33.
143
Arnheim (1969), p. 323.
144
Arnheim (1969), pp. 324-325.
145
Rudolf Arnheim, Film as Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957).
146
Arnheim (1957), p. 26.
147
Arnheim (1957), p. 66.
require intellectual reflection, or distance from reality and thus explore aesthetic
possibilities. The reality here is the reality of the commonsense naturalistic
coding orientation.
Brian Winston also examines the meaning of colour in photographic images. 148
He cites Douglas Fairbanks’ complaint that “colour could distract the eye,
confuse the action, and, presumably worst of all, ‘take attention from acting and
facial expression”149 and Buscombe’s argument that “colour came to denote
luxury, spectacle or fantasy”150 and argues that colour come to signify a lack of
serious intent. Halla Beloff also argues that, with the black-and-white
photographs, “the message is the message is spoken to the sophisticated, who
do not ‘need’ the bribe of colour,”151 and says “sober businesses need sober
suits.”152
This comment that sober business, by which Beloff means serious photographs
such as news photographs, need sober suits, by which he means black-and-
white photography with “an austerity, an abstractness”153 reminds us of Gunter
Kress and Theo van Leeuwen’s examination of independent semiotic modes,
where they argue that in the concert hall everything is concentrated on the
music and the expression through semiotic modes such as dress is held back,
by comparison to popular music shows.154 In classic music concert, players
usually wear black and white so that their dresses will not disturb our focus on
the music. They are the colours for formal dress in many cultures. Thus we
associate black and white to seriousness and formalness. Colour, as German
Romantic painters contends, is “‘instinctive’ and ‘sensual’, a matter of
immediate feeling rather than intellectual judgement, and toned down or
repressed in the mature adult,”155 and as colour preference comes to applied in
personality tests, each colour has cultural connotations. Of course the colours
black and white also have cultural connotations, but in the case of monochrome
photography, we regard it as absence of colours rather than the colours of black
148
Brian Winston, Technologies of Seeing: Photography, Cinematography and
Television (London: BFI Publishing, 1996), p. 54.
149
Ed Buscombe, ‘Sound and Colour’, in Jump Cut, April (1978) p.25, cited in
Weston (1996), p. 54.
150
Ibid.
151
152
Beloff (1985), p. 94.
153
Beloff (1985), p. 94.
154
Gunter Kress and Theo van Leeuwen, ‘Colour as a Semiotic Mode: Notes for a
Grammar of Colour’, in Visual Communication, October 2002, vol. 1, no. 3
(2002), pp. 343-368, p. 350.
155
and white. Thus black-and-white photography facilitates us to focus on subject
matter, its shape, its texture, or the overall light and shade scale.
Now let us examines the understanding and appreciation of colour
photography, as Ansel Adams puts it. He argues that colour photography is so
ubiquitous that the casual viewers accept them as the reality, for ‘the “real
world” is, for most people, an artefact of the industrial/material surround. The
colours of the urban environment are for the most part far more garish and
“unrelated” than we find in nature.’156 This reminds us of Boorstin’s argument
on pseudo-events and the difference between celebrities and heroes.157 We are
now so accustomed to the reality of colour photography that we believe in it
more than we believe in the actual world. Celebrities are the invention of this
contemporary society with the reality of artefact and our extravagant
expectations: they are the human pseudo-events. He says “the celebrity is the
creature of gossip, of public opinion, of magazines, newspapers, and the
ephemeral images of movie and television screen,”158 while “the old-fashioned
hero”159 is romanticised and anachronistic, who “stands the test of time.” 160 A
hero is a maker of tradition and is made by tradition: “receding into the misty
past he became more, and not less, heroic.”161
Here we can relate colour photography to celebrities for their vividness and
their close relation to magazines and ephemeral images of television, while we
can associate black-and-white photography with heroes for their roots in history.
Boorstin says that heroes stand for greatness in the traditional mould and tend
to become colourless and cliché.162 The image of a hero should be in black-and-
white for its mistiness and its feeling of ‘standing the test of time’ while the
image of a celebrity should be in colour for its immediate gratification and
popularity. For instance, in an article titled ‘When Mono Rules,’ a photographer
William Chung, explaining why he took a photograph of Sir Patrick Moore in
black-and-white, says, “you get a much better sense of the great man’s
156
Ansel Adams, notes, ‘Introduction to Color Book’ (Adams Estate, March 22,
1983) cited in James L. Enyeart, ‘Introduction: Quest for Color’, in Harry M.
Callahan (ed.), Ansel Adams in Color (Boston, London: Little Brown and
Company, 1993), pp. 9-32, p. 13.
157
Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (New
York: Vintage Book, 25th Anniversary edn, 1992).
158
Boorstin (1992), p. 63.
159
Boorstin (1992), p. 62.
160
Boorstin (1992), p. 62.
161
Boorstin (1992), p. 62.
162
Boorstin (1992), p. 64.
character. It just suits his eccentricity better.”163 And in fact, most photographs
of historic heroes are in black-and-white (for those heroes are in the age of
black-and-white photography) and photographs of celebrities are often in colour.
As Susan Sontag argues, photography teaches us how to look at the world,
those photographs of heroes and celebrities gradually motivate us to associate
black-and-white photography with heroes and authority and colour photography
with celebrities and transitoriness. Thus, black-and-white photography conveys
a great man’s character better than ephemeral colour photography.
William Cheung, Sir Patrick Moore Photography, 2003
And also in the case of family portraits, we tend to take snapshots in colour for
holidays to convey the happiness and vividness. As we have examined
arguments on colour by Kress and van Leeuwen and Arnheim, colour has
expressive sensory quality that resembles to the experience of emotions.
Arnheim explains Rorschach’s experiments that a cheerful mood makes for
colour responses and that colour dominance indicates openness to external
stimuli.164 Robert Warshow, in his book on American popular culture, argues that
we are obsessed with happiness,165 and certainly colour images and pseudo-
events encourage this tendency. Warshow also argues that mass audience
escapes into easy sentiment whereas the educated audience escapes into ideas
and that Death of a Salesman, a play by Arthur Miller, offers the atmosphere of
thought.166 Death of a Salesman, because of its lack of optimism portrayed as a
main characteristic of popular culture, is considered as earnest: as Warshow
says, pessimism is a measure of seriousness.167 Warshow also contends that ‘all
“negative” social images tend to given undue weight as representing a “truer”
reality.’168 Hence, black-and-white photography, for its absence of cheerful
optimistic colour, is considered as more solemn and sober. This quality of black-
and-white photography is especially significant in the domain of documentary
photography, combined with our association between ‘negative’ images and
163
‘When Mono Rules’, in Practical Photography May 2003, pp. 10-18, p. 12.
164
Arnheim (1969), p. 324.
165
Robert Warshow, The Immediate Experience: Movies, Comics, Theatre &
Other Aspects of Popular Culture (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard
University Press, enlarged edn 2001).
166
Warshow (2001), pp. 150-151.
167
Warshow (2001), p. 151.
168
Warshow (2001), p. 149.
‘truer’ reality. We examine this issue in detail in the following section on
documentary photography, but before that, we will look at argument on studium
and punctum by Roland Barthes.169
Barthes finds two elements in photography. The first is something familiar to
knowledge and culture, it is a kind of general interest and it gives an average
impression. Barthes calls this element studium. We have to study a photograph
and find its political or cultural connotation here. The second element comes to
break studium. This time, viewer does not have to try to find it: it comes to
pierce the viewer. Barthes calls it punctum.170 Barthes explains that specific
details function as punctum. However, here, we will extend the definition of
punctum to include certain quality of a photograph that emerges to impress the
viewer, while studium signifies overall information of a photograph.
Colour photography, as a whole, can work well as studium for its naturalistic
representation: it has more information than black-and-white photography.
Photography, as Umberto Eco contends, is not considered as an analogue of
reality any more, and we need to be trained to recognise the photographic
image,171 and colour is one of the effective codes of recognition. As Arnheim
argues, shape enables us to distinguish things from each other, but colour also
helps considerably.172 Especially today with most images in colour photographs
as in television and films, we are, in general, more used to decode colour
photographic images and it is easier for us to do so than to decode black-and-
white images. For example, as Arnheim says, “when looking at a black-and-
white movie, we are often at a loss to identify the strange food the actors have
on their plates,”173 because of its absence of colour. In this sense, colour has
more information, and thus more suitable for function of studium. Black-and-
white photography can operate as punctum, for in today’s environment full of
colour photographic images, black-and-white photography stands out. Colour,
as each colour, can also operate as punctum, as in the case of smashing, garish
colour, as Ansel Adams puts it.174 However, it is black-and-white photography
that encourages the function of punctum. Black-and-white photographs, unlike
169
Gallimard, 1980).
170
Barthes (1980), pp. 47-49. My translation.
171
Umberto Eco, ‘Critique of the Image’, in Victor Burgin (ed.), Thinking
Photography (London: Macmillan, 1982), pp. 32-37.
172
Arnheim (1969), p. 323.
173
Arnheim (1969), p. 323.
174
Ansel Adams, notes (Adams Estate, March 4, 1983) cited in Enyeart (1993),
p. 19.
information-rich colour photographs, allow us to focus on other things than
information from the whole photograph, for example, texture or shade. And this
can encourage punctum to emerge from plan of a photograph. For instance,
look at the photograph of a folk by André Kertész, or the photography of a
pepper by Edward Weston. As whole photographs, they denote a folk,
André Kertész, La Fourchette, 1928.
or a pepper. The subject matters have no photographic significance per se. It is

its shape, composition, texture and shade that make the photographs
interesting. Black-and-white photography allows those qualities to come forth.
Whereas in colour, colour composition and colour tones will disturb those
qualities.
Edward Weston, Pepper 30, 1930.
Barthes also says that photography is subversive not when it frightens,

repulses, or even stigmatises, but when it is pensive,175 and we can also say
that black-and-white photography is more pensive, for its absence of colour
confers a certain stasis and starkness. Therefore, we can say that black-and-
white photography can fulfil function of punctum better than colour
photography.
It may seem contradictory that black-and-white photography has its root in
history and therefore has power to confer authority on the subject matter, but
at the same time it allows us to focus on qualities of photography other than
intended subject matter. However, we can read different elements from a
photograph: we can read photography as intended by photographers, editors,
or advertisers, or we can create meanings over it. Also, as we looked at coding
orientations argued by Kress and van Leeuwen, we use different coding
orientations in each genre. Thus we use various historical, social and cultural
associations in each genre. Here, we will examine three genres where black-
and-white photography has a significant role: documentary, art and
advertisement photography.
3 Documentary Photography
175
Barthes (1980), p. 65.
“The quality of authenticity implicit in a photograph may give it special value
as evidence, or proof,”176 as Beaumont Newhall says, and even though we now
know the possibilities of manipulation, we still have “our faith in the silent
authority of photographs and recognize their value as reportage.”177 Although
dispute on validity of documentary photography abides, use of photography for
documentary and journalism is ubiquitous, and here we will focus on the
function of black-and-white photography in the realm of documentary
photography.
Documentary photographs are, as Derrick Price argues, traditionally in black-
and-white whereas they could be in colour in today’s postmodern
environment.178 Terence Wright investigates “how attitudes have changed
regarding photography’s ability to document”179 and examines use of colour in
1970s.180 However, stark black-and-white photography still seems more suitable
for serious documentary photography. Historically, Enyeart examines, colour is
considered to enhance the illusion of the general public that photography is a
means of capturing reality, whereas photographers have always considered
photography as a vessel of truth or an abstraction,181 and as Derrick Prince
argues, black-and-white photography, originally a necessary condition, “became
a guarantor of the integrity of an image for many photographers,”182 and “the
suppression of colour made it possible to control the aesthetic qualities of the
picture and helped to structure its connotative meaning.”183
Don Slater examines the belief that Camerawork had before the age of
postmodernism: “a belief that images can ‘represent’ a ‘truth’, that one can
distinguish appearance and ‘essence’, that images should serve social
176
Beaumont Newhall, The History of Photography: from1839 to the Present
(New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 5th edn, 1982), p. 235.
177
Michael L. Carlebach, The Origins of Photojournalism in America (Washington
and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), p. 4
178
Derrick Price, ‘Surveyors and Surveyed: Photography Out and About’, in Liz
Wells (ed.), Photography: A Critical Introduction (London and New York:
Routledge, 2nd edn, 2000), pp. 65-115, p. 111.
179
180
Wright (1999), p. 140.
181
32, p.13.
182
Derrick Price (2000), p. 111.
183
Derrick Price (2000), p. 111.
struggles.”184 The commencement of use of colour in documentary photography
coincides with the rise of postmodernist arguments, thus we associate colour
photography with postmodernism, whereas black-and-white photography
continues to have this belief in truth and essence, therefore in authority and
authenticity.
As we have examined in the previous section, black-and-white photography
has the quality equal to that of heroes whereas colour photography can be
related to celebrities. This association confers historical authenticity and
authority on depiction in black-and-white. Dorothea Lange was told, when she
complained of the excessive use of Migrant Mother to the neglect of her other
works, that time is the greatest of editors and the most reliable. 185 Black-and-
white, because of its status as a medium for documents established long before
colour medium, has association to history and thus offers the feeling of having
survived through history. And this quality enhances the specificity of
photographic referent as Barthes argues: ‘it was there’ 186
as well as the
romanticism of photography as Susan Sontag argues.187
Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, 1936.
Now, how does this quality of black-and-white photography serve for

documentary photographs? The subject-matter of documentary photography is
often human suffering, as in the case of Migrant Mother, or atrocity of war.
Terence Wright cites a comment by David Duncan that colour is unsuitable for
documenting war, for “it violate too many of the human decencies and the
great privacy of the battlefield.”188
Documentary photography is intended to inform people of events and make
them aware of how others live in the other side of the world (often in plights): as
184
Don Slater, ‘The Object of Photography’, in Jessica Evans (ed.), The
Camerawork Essays: Context and Meaning in Photography (London: Rivers
Oram Press, 1997).
185
Drothea Lange, ‘The Assignment I’ll Never Forget’ (1960), reprinted in
Beaumont Newhall (ed.), Photography: Essays & Images (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1980), pp. 262-265, p. 263.
186
Gallimard, 1980), pp. 119-122. My translation.
187
Susan Sontag, On Photography (London: Penguin Books, 1979). In Chapter II
of this dissertation, we looked at this romanticism as function of le Spectrum.
Refer to page 8.
188
Halla Beloff says, documentary photography shows us “the noble losers in
society.”189 Thus, it is better not to be too realistic in order not to repulse the
viewers. Black and white photography helps people to take safe distance from
the tragedy depicted. Consider, for example, a photograph by Weegee. If it
were in colour, it would be too vivid and too shocking, and hence could be
sensational, whereas in stark black-and-white, it seems to gain more gain
journalistic, evidential or aesthetic value. As Terence Wright argues, colour
images have not been considered to “embody the harsh actuality demanded by
such documentary modes as the news photograph, established by
photographers like Weegee,”190 and, as Halla Beloff says, “news photographs in
colour would look less stark, less businesslike and more jolly.”191
Weegee (Arthur Fellig), Murder in Hell’s Kitchen, 1940
Jonathan Friday’s “Demonic curiosity and Aesthetics of Documentary

Photography”192 examines the psychology behind documentary photography. In
this article, Friday examines how documentary photography taking forms of
human suffering as its subject matter could ever achieve the significance of art.
He explains how artists can transform psychological disturbance into objects of
aesthetic value. As he contends, traditionally “an aesthetic interesting
representation involves an indifference to the reality of the objects and events
represented.”193 Rudolf Arnheim argues that the absence of colour produces an
unreality just as much from the reduction of three-dimensionality.194 And
because of this alienation from reality, black and white photography tends to
make us focus on the historic or aesthetic value of photography.
However, Friday continues, when the subject matter is horrifying, the difficulty
arises “because the spectator’s knowledge that this is how things were
overwhelms any attempt to fictionalise the subject matter in the manner of
aesthetic attention.”195 For instance, Friday examines a photograph by Don
McCullin and says that it sets up a conflict in the spectator’s mind “between the
189
Beloff (1985), p. 125.
190
191
192
Jonathan Friday, ‘Demonic Curiosity and the Aesthetics of Documentary
Photography’, in British Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 40, No. 3 (2000), pp. 356-375.
193
Friday (2000), p. 368.
194
Rudolf Arnheim, Film as Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957).
195
Friday (2000), p. 368.
attractiveness of its beauty and the dark
Don McCullin, Shell-shocked Soldier, 1968
horror of its content.”196 However, documentary photography is not trying to

fictionalise the subject matter, but to emotionally distance, and as Friday
examines works of Robert Capa, this distancing “does not diminish or deny the
reality,”197 but establishes “a pictorial meaning beyond a mere index of the
event depicted,”198 and “a meaning that encompasses but extends beyond the
subject matter.”199 Friday concludes that the art of documentary photography
requires “an artist who can transfigure human suffering and a spectator who
can redeem this suffering, and their own attention to it, by grasping important
moral insights.”200
Robert Capa, D-Day, Omaha Beach, 1944
Pierre Bourdieu also argues that bourgeois discourse about the social world
requires and performs neutralisation and distancing.201 Susan Sontag argues
documentary photography reflects the urge to appropriate an alien reality,202
and that photography offers “both participation and alienation in our own lives
and those of others – allowing us to participate, while confirming alienation” 203
Marius De Zayas also says: “The more analytical man is, the more he separates
himself from the subject and the nearer he gets to the comprehension of the
object.”204
Here, black-and-white photography seems to fulfil these functions better than
colour. As examined above, black-and-white photography has the stamp of
196
Friday (2000), p. 372..
197
Friday (2000), p. 368.
198
Friday (2000), p. 368.
199
Friday (2000), p. 368.
200
Friday (2000), p. 375.
201
Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste,
1979), p. 45.
202
Sontag (1979), p. 63.
203
Sontag (1979), p. 167.
204
Marius De Zayas, ‘Photography’, in Camera Work, no. 41 (1913) and
‘Photography and Artistic-Photography’, in Camera Work, no. 42/43 (1913),
reprinted in Alan Trachtenberg (ed.), Classic Essays on Photography (New
Haven: Leete’s Island Books, 1980), pp. 125-132, p. 131.
history and therefore it offers temporal remoteness and sense of authority as
well as emotional distancing due to its absence of sensory colour. This
alienation from immediate sensation allows black-and-white photography to
give sense of abstraction and neutralisation, which, combined with sense of
authority and authenticity, confer scientific and intellectual tone on black-and-
white photography.
4 Art Photography
There have been arguments as to whether photography can be art since the
early days of photography, and it still raises questions today. However, here, we
will focus on how black-and-white photography can be more artistic than colour
in some aspects.
As examined above, many photographers have felt that they have more control
over black-and-white photography than colour. Colour, if not applied with clear
purpose, can disturb the whole photograph. We can see an example from ‘When
Mono Rules,’205 which argues that colour can distract from mood or messages a
photographer wants to convey with photographs and explains how monochrome
photography can be better choice. The photographer William Cheung explains
why he chose black-and-white in photographing Billboard Girls Photography,
saying that the scene looks muddled with the wires across the road distracting
in colour, but that in monochrome, the scene “takes on much more graphic
quality.”206
William Cheung, Billboard Girls Photography, 2003
This notion that black-and-white photography can be more graphic reminds us

of Rudolf Arnheim’s argument that absence of colour allows us to focus on
shape.207 Consider, for example, Constructivist photography with a radical point
of view208 such as Pioneer with a Horn by Alexander Rodchenko, or Bauhaus
artist László Moholy-Nagy’s photograph, Bauhaus Balconies. Those photographs
205
‘When Mono Rules’, in Practical Photography May 2003, pp. 10-18.
206
Ibid., p. 11.
207
Rudolf Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception (London: Faber and Faber, 1969).
Arnheim’s theories are examined in the previous section on semiotic and
psychology of this dissertation.
208
Graham Clarke, The Photograph (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press,
1997), p. 192.
are “in quest of form” as Beaumont
Alexander Mikhailovich Rodchenko, Pioneer with a Horn, 1930
László Moholy-Nagy, Bauhaus Balconies, 1929
Newhall puts it.209 Forms in these photographs would be still interesting even in
colour, but it could be distracting for its emotive value. Unless we want to focus
on forms of colour as in the case of Ernst Haas210 or Edward Weston’s colour
photography,211 black-and-white is more suitable for quest of form, shape and
perspective. It is also a suitable medium for representation of shades and all the
gradation of grey. For instance, André Kertész says that grey is the colour in
which all the colours reassembled into one, and that grey is the only
photographic subject.212
André Kertész, La Tour Eiffel, Paris, 1929
Those photographs have ability to show something we overlook in our daily life.
Moholy-Nagy consider camera as a tool for extending vision and this appreciate
photographs for scientific and other utilitarian purposes for the sake of quest for
form.213 And black-and-white photography enhances this function for its
disparity from reality and its focus on shape. Consider, for example,
photographs of plants. There are artistic photographs of flowers in colour such
as some works by Robert Mapplethorpe, but they are more often in black-and-
white. In black-and-white, we can focus on the
Robert Mapplethorpe, Calla Lily, 1986　　　　　Robert Mapplethorpe, Poppy,

1988 　　
209
Beaumont Newhall, ‘In Quest of Form’, in The History of Photography:
from1839 to the Present (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 5th edn, 1982),
pp. 198-215. Here he argues that in the 1920s, photographers found the “new
perspective” which has compositional possibilities and is different from
academic perspective based on vanishing points placed at eye level.
210
Refer to the page 14.
211
Refer to Weston’s argument exhibited at page 20.
212
Pierre Borhan (ed.), André Kertész: la Biographie d’une Oeuvre (Paris: Seuil,
1994), p. 93. My translation.
213
Beaumont Newhall, The History of Photography: from1839 to the Present
(New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 5th edn, 1982), pp. 206-207.
　　　　
Albert Renger-Patzsch, Echeoeria, 1922　　Imogen Cunningham, Magnolia Blossom,
1925
beauty of shapes, forms and texture of plants while in real life we would
appreciate the beauty of colour and of flowers as they are. In an article ‘When
Mono Rules,’ Ian Biggs explains why he prefers monotone photograph of tulips
to colour: the colour version has impact but lacks subtlety while in the mono
version is “a delicate blend of tones which seems to make the eye appreciate
the beautiful shape of the tulips even more.”214
Ian Biggs, Tulip Photography, 2002
In the same way, photographs of scenery look more artistic in black-and-white,

as in works of Ansel Adams. Adams, although he has experimented with colour
photography, says in the 1978 edition of Polaroid Land Photography that the
most difficult subject for colour photography was landscape,215 and when he
photographed Arizona Highways,
Ansel Adams, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941
Ansel Adams, Scripps Pier, 1966
Ansel Adams, Road, Nevada Desert, circa 1960
he preferred “the more abstract qualities of black and white, which, he felt,
emphasized the photographer’s interpretive vision,”216 and he felt colour
photographs seemed ‘too saccharine and looked the kind of “super
postcards”.’ 217
Colour photography of magnificent scenery is suitable for tourist
guide books. As Enyeart argues, colour has been seen “as a debased desire on
the part of an unknowing public, who values a semblance of reality over the
214
‘When Mono Rules’ in Practical Photography May 2003, pp. 10-18, p.16.
215
32, p. 20.
216
Jonathan Spaulding, Ansel Adams and the American Landscape: A Biography
(Berkeley, LA and London: University of California Press, 1995), p. 275.
217
Ibid.
personal vision of a photographer expressed in black-and-white.”218 Adams
believes that the responsibility of the artist is “to enhance optical reality by way
of photographic controls … in order to provide an impression that is more
communicative than reality itself,”219 and that his work is about “the impression
or equivalent of an experience in reality.”220 He also says in his essay that “art
implies control of reality, for reality itself possesses no sense of the esthetic.
Photography becomes an art when certain controls are applied: camera
position, focal length of lens, filters, negative material, exposure, development
and printing procedures.”221 Edward Weston also argues that his ideals of
photography are “much more difficult to live up to in the case of landscape
workers”222 for “nature unadulterated and unimproved by man … is simply
chaos. In fact, the camera proves
Edward Weston, Dunes, Oceano, 1936 Edward Weston, Tomato Field, 1937
that nature is crude and lacking in arrangement, and only possible when man
isolates and selects from her.”223 Here he also emphasise the importance of
interpretations of subject matter that “stir one intellectually.”224
Black-and-white photography gives this control to photographers and offers the
sense of artistic process and interpretation to viewers, for it is different from
what we normally see. As an article ‘When Mono Rules’ says, imagining what a
colour scene will look like in terms of monochromatic tones needs experience to
develop concept of dark and light and understand the relationships of tones
within a scene: one need to develop the ability to see in black and white.225
Ansel Adams also says that black-and-white photography is “an almost
complete abstraction.”226 This abstraction requires intellectual viewing from the
audience. Pierre Bourdieu examines popular taste and judgement of
photography and argues that popular tastes reject some photographs because
218
Enyeart (1993), p. 12.
219
Enyeart (1993), p. 28.
220
Enyeart (1993), p. 28.
221
Ansel Adams, essay entitled “Color and Control” with notation “copy to file”
(no date), Adams Estate, cited in Enyeart (1993), p. 24.
222
Edward Weston, ‘Random Notes on Photography’ (1922) reprinted in
Beaumont Newhall, (ed.) Photography: Essays & Images (London: Secker &
Warburg, 1980), pp. 223-230, p. 225.
223
Ibid.
224
Ibid.
225
‘When Mono Rules’, in Practical Photography May 2003, pp. 10-18.
226
Enyeart (1993), p. 28.
of their uselessness (pebbles, tree-bark, wave), but that “colour can suspend
the rejection of photographs of trivial things.”227 General public would say ‘in
colour, that could be pretty’ and ‘if the colour is good, colour photography is
always beautiful,’228 and Bourdieu argues that this is exactly popular taste that
Kant describes.229 On the other hand, people with higher education tend to
“refuse the ordinary objects of popular admiration,”230 although there is also
aesthetic disposition that any object can be perceived aesthetically among the
highest-qualified people.231 As a result of higher education in our society that
evaluate detachment, abstraction and decontextualization,232 intellectuals and
bourgeoisie prefer abstraction and neutralisation,233 and black-and-white fulfils
this demand. Also, as Halla Beloff argues the problem of beauty, “photographs
are inextricably linked with nostalgia,”234 and also photographs teach us what to
appreciate. As we examined in the section on semiotics and psychology, our
aesthetic judgment is based on and shaped by history and masterpieces from
the past as well as culture and society. As to landscape photography, Peter
Henry Emerson’s works have been highly appreciated and museums and
galleries
Peter Henry Emerson, Gathering Water Lilies, 1886
often exhibit black-and-white photographs. Consider also portrait photography.

Julia Margaret Cameron’s works have been always appreciated for its nostalgic
pre-Raphael character and certainly have influenced other photographers.
Thus black-and-white photography is associated with masterpiece from the
past, with its stamp of history and sense of intellectual and artistic process, and
227
(Cambridge: Polity Press, paperback edn, 1996), p. 92.
228
Ibid.
229
Ibid. Here Bourdieu cites a passage from Critique of Judgment: ‘Taste that
requires an added element of charm and emotion for its delight, not to speak of
adopting this as the measure of its approval, has not yet emerged from
barbarism.’ Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. J. C. Meredith (London:
Oxford University Press, 1952), p. 65.
230
Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste,
1979), p. 35.
231
Bourdieu (1979), p. 39.
232
Gunter Kress and Theo van Leeuwen, Reading Images: The Grammar of
Visual Design (London: Routeledge, 1996), p. 170.
233
Bourdieu (1979), p. 45.
234
is more suitable for art photography than colour, for its focus on shape, form,
perspective, texture and light and shade, and also its abstraction and
neutralisation due to its absence of sensory emotive colour.
Julia Margaret Cameron, Mary Hillier, 1872
Garry Winogrand, portrait of Marilyn during filming of The Seven Year Itch, 1954
Garry Winogrand, New York, 1968
5 Advertisement Photography
One of the characteristics of our society is its emphasis on commodities. As

Anadi Ramamurthy argues, photography is “both a cultural tool which has been
commodified as well as a tool that has been used to express commodity culture
through advertisements and other marketing material.”235 Advertising
photography is one of the most pervasive photographs in our daily life, and as
noted earlier, from 1980s, advertising started to use black-and-white
photography in specific contexts. 236
Peter Pae writes in Wall Street Journal that
this trend “mirrors the popularity of black and white in fashion,”237 and today
there are always some advertisements in black-and-white for fashion, especially
for luxurious perfumes, and monotone fashion photography in magazines. Thus
here we will focus on fashion advertisement and how black-and-white
photography can enhance its functions.
Paul Virilio argues that advertising photography suggests inversion of
perception: advertising forces itself on us and its image perceives us, and says
that “suggestiveness” is advertising’s raison d’être.238 The purpose of
advertising is to give impact. We said earlier that there are always some black-
and-white images, but most images we perceive in everyday life are in colour.
Thus black-and-white photography looks conspicuous and attracts attention. It
235
Anadi Ramamurthy, ‘Constructions of Illusion: Photography and Commodity
Culture’ in Liz Wells (ed.), Photography: A Critical Introduction (London:
Routledge, 2nd edn 2000), pp. 165-216, p. 167.
236
Refer to pages 19-22: here advertising campaign by Gap Inc. is illustrated.
237
Appeal After Long Fall’ in Wall Street Journal (New York: October 17, 1989,
Eastern edn), p. 1.
238
Paul Virilio, ‘The Vision Machine’ in James Der Derian (ed.), The Virilio Reader
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), pp. 134-151, p. 137.
also fulfils the function of advertisement to differentiate products, for images in
black-and-white have different connotations from those in colour.
Judith Williamson argues that advertisements must consider not only the
inherent qualities and attributes of the products they are trying to sell, but also
the way in which they can make those properties mean something to us.239
Products such as perfumes have no substantial difference from each other in
themselves, thus advertisers need to create differences, and as Gillian Dyer
says, “the most obvious way of creating distinction between products and to
make one stand out from the rest is to give it a distinctive image.”240 Judith
Williamson also argues that difference is crucial to signification and that a sign
is defined by what it is not: a sign must “point to an Other, the referent which it
is not, but which it means.”241 Black-and-white photography means
differentiation from prevalent colour images which historically have been
related to popularism and commercialism.242 As we looked at Pierre Bourdieu’s
argument on socio-cultural class distinction in the judgement of taste,243
bourgeoisies and intellectuals have different aesthetic appreciation from
general public, and as in previous arguments, we associate black-and-white
with intellectual aesthetic appreciation and colour with popular taste. Thus,
advertisement which seeks for high-class or intellectual atmosphere is better
represented in black-and-white photography. There are also colour
advertisements for luxurious products, where either colour has significance for
differentiation of products, it refers to popular, kitsch, or postmodern culture
and art, or with colour manipulation or enhancement. In some cases, realistic
colour representation seems to be employed to show its naturalism and
freshness or happy sense of colour (although even in such case, colour
coordination is minutely contrived).
Sarah Moon, Anna Sui advertisement, 2002
239
Judith Williamson, Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in
Advertising (London and Boston: Marion Boyars, 1978), p. 11.
240
Gillian Dyer, Advertising as Communication (London and New York: Methuen,
1982), p. 123.
241
Williamson (1978), p. 60. Original italics.
242
Refer to the previous section ‘Colour Photography’, pp. 16-22.
243
(Cambridge: Polity Press, paperback edn, 1996), and Distinction: A Social
Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (London, Melbourne and
Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979). Refer to page 7 and page 43.
Hermès advertisement, 2002-2003
Still black-and-white photography has special significance in advertising

luxurious products: as Halla Beloff says, black-and-white photography “has an
austerity, an abstractness that means we take notice of it in a particular way.”244
And advertisements in black-and-white for brands such as Calvin Klein or
Giorgio Armani and trendy fashion photographs by renowned fashion
photographers such as Peter Lindberg, Helmut Newton, Bruce Weber and Herb
Ritts have conferred high-class and stylish connotation on black-and-white
photography.
Peter Lindberg, Guerlain advertisement, 1998
Helmut Newton, Big Nude III, Paris, 1980

　　　　
Bruce Weber, Calvin Klein advertisement, 1992
Herb Ritts, Lacoste advertisement, 2002
Manuel Alvarado examines narrativity of advertising photography in his essay

‘Photographs and Narrativity.’245 Here, he argues that the narrative function of
advertising photographs is “to confirm the self-enclosed representation of the
‘world’ depicted”246 and that the fictional narrative of advertising photography
“tends to deny its own production and to create a ‘world’ – one that is enclosed
and without contradiction.”247 And Arnheim argues that fashion photography
shows stylised model in the midst of an authentic setting and “such apparitions
in the public domain were for a while, they looked too obviously like artefacts
truly to stir the sense of the superreal.”248 We do not expect fashion advertising
to reveal the process or details of production. As Alvarado argues, image in
common advertising strategy implies the question of what the product could be
244
245
Manuel Alvarado, ‘Photographs and Narrativity’ in Screen Education, 32-33,
Autumn – Winter, 1979/80, pp. 5-17, reprinted in Manuel Alvarado, Edward
Buscombe and Richard Collins (eds.), Representation and Photography: A
Screen Education Reader (New York: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 148-163.
246
Alvarado (2001), p. 156.
247
Alvarado (2001), p. 156.
248
Rudolf Arnheim, ‘On the Nature of Photography in Critical Inquiry vol.
1,September (1974), pp. 149-161, p. 154.
measured against,249 and, as Beloff says, advertising photography “must not
only inject our consciousness with the simple content that is there, but also
draw in motherhood, wealth, up-to-dateness, sexual arousal.”250 Here it is
interesting that many luxurious perfume advertisements use black-and-white
images and colour photography of the products. With those advertise-
Mario Testino, Gucci advertisement, 1997-1998
Mario Testino, Dolce & Gabbana advertisement, 2001-2003
Patrick Demarchelier, Giorgio Armani advertisement, 1997-2003
Chanel advertisement, 1990
Chanel Advertisement, 1996
ments, we look at realistic colour representations of the products, but at the

same time, we look at their implied images in black-and-white, which, as we
have argued, distances from reality with its sense of abstraction. This
encourages us to focus separately on the product and the image: the product is
in front of the monotone image, and this invites us to connect a particular real
product with the abstract constructed world of advertisement in a peculiar way.
We know the world depicted is not real, and we know that the product is real,
and still we feel that this real product has this implied world behind it. The
image forces itself on the product and it perceives us. This is possible because
we perceive colour and black-and-white images differently. As Roland Barthes
argues, photography has two iconic messages: a coded iconic message, and a
non-coded iconic message.251 These advertisements with both colour and black-
and-white photographs have two clearly distinctive messages. Colour realistic
249
Alvarado (2001), p. 157.
250
Beloff, (1985), p. 18.
251
Roland Barthes, ‘Rhetoric of the Image’, in Communications 4 (1964),
reprinted in Image Music Text, trans. Stephen Heath (London: Fontana, 1977),
pp. 32-51.
Note: as for the photographs of advertisements of perfumes, one can find the
images at world wide web: Images de Parfums – Collection de publicités de
parfums
< http://www.imagesdeparfums.fr.st>
representation of the product is without code, and the depiction of fictional
narrative of the implied world in black-and-white is coded. Black-and-white
photography enhances the confirmation of the fictional narrative of
advertisement with its remoteness from reality. Colour photography enhances
the reality of the product.
Black-and-white photography in advertisement reinforces the confirmation of
fictional narrative of advertisement, and enhances the function of differentiation
with its connotation of high-art and stylishness.
IV Conclusion
In this dissertation we have examined why people still use black-and-white

photography a long time after the invention of practical colour process, and how
black-and-white photography enhances functions of photography, as we
examined in review of the literature.
We first examined history of colour photography and the argument is that
colour photography has been associated to commercialism and serious
photographers have preferred black-and-white photography. Colour
photography is related to amateurism and popular magazines and has been
considered to debase aesthetic appreciation. Also, black-and-white
photography, especially from fashion advertisement in the 1980s, has come to
signify stylishness.
Then we examined semiotics and psychological arguments in relation to
colour and black-and-white images. Colour has emotive while black and white,
as colour, connote formality, and as absence of colour, have sense of
abstraction, therefore comply with requirement of today’s higher education.
Absence of colour also allows us to focus on shape, which requires intellectual
engagement from audience. Black-and-white also connotes history and
austerity for its anachronism and absence of sensory colour.
In the section on documentary photography, we examined the relation
between demonic curiosity and black-and-white photography. Black-and-white
photography, for its absence of emotive colour and its connotation of history
and abstraction, can authorise and neutralise the depiction with its intellectual
and scientific tone.
For art photography, black-and-white photography allows viewers to focus on
shape, form, shades, and texture of subject matter and on perspective of
photography, thus requires intellectual and aesthetic engagement.
Advertisement photography intends to attract attention and to differentiate
products, and black-and-white photography can fulfil those functions, for its
disparity from reality due to its absence of colour and also for its association
with advertisements for high-class brands and stylish fashion magazines and for
its abstraction which can be related to intellectuals whereas colour is related to
popular tastes.
Black-and-white photography, for its focus on shape, form, texture, shades
and perspective, it leads to conceptualisation and aestheticisation of the
subject-matter and also leads to differentiation from pervasive colour which is
associated to commercialism and popular taste, and for its abstraction and
neutralisation due to absence of sensory emotive colour, has intellectual
atmosphere and sense of authority.
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Yuka Nojima

Black and White Photography

Dissertation, MA in Communications Studies

II Review of the Literature

III Examination of Black-and-White Photography

2 Semiotics and Psychology

II Review of the Literature

In this chapter, first we will review theories on photography focusing on

Now how do we perceive this message from le Spectrum as le Spectator?

Ernst Haas, Rose, 1970

It seems that roles of black-and-white photography and colour photography

In this section, we will examine the history of colour photography, how

Even in those days, colour photography was related to commercialism and

Edward Weston, Waterfront, 1946.

From the mid-1970s, some younger creative photographers with started to

Gap Advertisement with James Dean and Jack Kerouac

Gap Inc. Advertisement Campaign 2002

its advertisements, as do many other fashion advertisements. Marc L. Hauser, a

William Cheung, Sir Patrick Moore Photography, 2003

André Kertész, La Fourchette, 1928.

or a pepper. The subject matters have no photographic significance per se. It is

Edward Weston, Pepper 30, 1930.

Barthes also says that photography is subversive not when it frightens,

Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, 1936.

Now, how does this quality of black-and-white photography serve for

Weegee (Arthur Fellig), Murder in Hell’s Kitchen, 1940

Jonathan Friday’s “Demonic curiosity and Aesthetics of Documentary

Don McCullin, Shell-shocked Soldier, 1968

horror of its content.”196 However, documentary photography is not trying to

Robert Capa, D-Day, Omaha Beach, 1944

William Cheung, Billboard Girls Photography, 2003

This notion that black-and-white photography can be more graphic reminds us

Alexander Mikhailovich Rodchenko, Pioneer with a Horn, 1930

László Moholy-Nagy, Bauhaus Balconies, 1929

André Kertész, La Tour Eiffel, Paris, 1929

Robert Mapplethorpe, Calla Lily, 1986 Robert Mapplethorpe, Poppy,

Ian Biggs, Tulip Photography, 2002

In the same way, photographs of scenery look more artistic in black-and-white,

Ansel Adams, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941

Ansel Adams, Scripps Pier, 1966

Ansel Adams, Road, Nevada Desert, circa 1960

Peter Henry Emerson, Gathering Water Lilies, 1886

often exhibit black-and-white photographs. Consider also portrait photography.

Julia Margaret Cameron, Mary Hillier, 1872

Garry Winogrand, New York, 1968

One of the characteristics of our society is its emphasis on commodities. As

Sarah Moon, Anna Sui advertisement, 2002

Still black-and-white photography has special significance in advertising

Peter Lindberg, Guerlain advertisement, 1998

Helmut Newton, Big Nude III, Paris, 1980

Herb Ritts, Lacoste advertisement, 2002

Manuel Alvarado examines narrativity of advertising photography in his essay

Mario Testino, Gucci advertisement, 1997-1998

Mario Testino, Dolce & Gabbana advertisement, 2001-2003

Patrick Demarchelier, Giorgio Armani advertisement, 1997-2003

Chanel advertisement, 1990

Chanel Advertisement, 1996

ments, we look at realistic colour representations of the products, but at the

In this dissertation we have examined why people still use black-and-white

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III Examination of Black-and-White Photography　　　　　　　　　　

2 Semiotics and Psychology 　　　　　　　　

Robert Mapplethorpe, Calla Lily, 1986　　　　　Robert Mapplethorpe, Poppy,