Our current exhibition at The Norman Rea features a collection of large format photographs by the brilliant welsh photographer Paul White. For those who haven’t had a chance to see it yet (shame on you, but there’s still a window of opportunity to catch it before Easter!) these are photographs which exploit to maximum impact the medium of black and white photography.
The haggard ruins of manor houses and crumbling castles look especially imposing in monochrome. The landscapes are reduced to bleak, receding grey tones as the very grouting laced between the crumbling bricks of these buildings is brought out in spectacularly rich texture. Stylistic comparisons between White’s work, and the work of ‘high art’ photographers (Man Ray, Adams etc.) are easily made – the photographs nod towards a very technically proficient artist, who undertook a great amount of painstaking labour in their making.
White talks very eloquently about his work, and can prompt you to view his images in ways you wouldn’t have thought of, sharing that gift of access to the artist’s perspective. But there was one thing he couldn’t explain when I talked with him (an inability he laughingly acknowledged), and which consequently has been playing on my mind since. It’s a simple question, potentially banal, but one I believe to be worth pondering as you view White’s work: why does everything look better in black and white?
Part of the beauty of monochrome is that it bypasses the muddiness of colour. The world doesn’t exist in boldly defined, pop-art blocks of primary tones – it is daubed in subtle gradations. The churning mechanisms of the camera make mulch of this gradation, creating images drained of the vibrancy that only the human eye is capable of perceiving. In monochrome, light, tone and texture make everything look comparatively pure, clean and bold – this vibrancy is captured, if only as an illusion. The illusion hints at the vibrancy of the real world, and because we’re not being distracted by gaudy, unnecessary colour, our eager brain does the rest of the work, filling in the gap.
This might go some way to explaining the power of black and white. But what is it about seeing our world reduced to grayscale that we find so captivating? Why so eager to discard colour when it comes to photography, when that colour is often the very first thing we will notice about a painting or drawing? Is there something particularly enigmatic or particularly sexy about life without colour?
Visit http://www.welshruins.co.uk/ to see Paul White’s work.