My shelves are overflowing with albums filled with black and white photographs of days long gone; of my Mother, Father and family. Slowly they are being scanned to computer and archived into acid free portfolios. However this is mostly a future retirement project as it is very labor intensive.
A nostalgic love affair for the 1950’s and 60’s photo’s, film and TV has consumed me, a result of too much winter and a longing to return to my youth. My childhood was a joyful time even in black and white.
I cherished my first camera, a bulky black plastic box with a round view finder, black strap on top and cylindrical film canister you had to load onto a reel. Suburban flora and fauna captured in still life; squirrels, birds, the pet cat, my Mom’s elaborate flower gardens. I’ve come a long way since then into the age of digital, but I pine for those black & white film days. It was bulky, messy and time consuming, but darling. I miss the hands on work of creating black & white photo’s.
When I took photography at College in the 1970’s we developed our own film. Definitely a labor of love. Colour developing required very expensive equipment and none of us could touch it until we mastered the black & white techniques.
I was also quite the TV and movie buff in my early years. In this booming age of technology I have been fortunate to revisit much of this on DVD. They do look better on a big LCD screen than the curved grey glass of our old black & white TV! Many films and series have stood the test of time. I was raised on long slow films so I can endure them. Modern films bore me with jumbles of fast moving snap shots of non stop action that lack cohesion. Nothing can beat a good story, in film, photo or black print on a white page.
On top of my bookcase is a favorite black & white photo of my Brother and Dad ready to leave on a fishing trip. There is something about the tones and details of the greys, blacks and whites that is so pleasing to my eyes.
This is very strange to love black & white because most of my art works are very bright collages of near neon colour. And I do love colour photography, yet . . .
There is definitely a mood to black & white that you can’t replicate in colour. It evokes an emotion that takes me back home.
Perhaps when I retire I will pursue black & white photography once more, maybe even film! Give my senior years a mood!
I can try to recreate some of my lost youth, but it all seems so long and black and white ago.