The New Color:

The Return of Black-and-White

by CHARLOTTE COTTON (read full essay)

in this article the writer ponder about B&W photography and it's force in the turn of the century, choosing key photographer artists. I choose Yoram Kupermintz's photo, Kupermintz is an israeli painter and photographer.

..."I'm not suggesting that these artists are primarily undertaking a acts of re-thinking history; these are not merely descriptions of how to reinterpret the language of black-and-white photography just when the moment in photography's journey seems to be paved with color LightJet prints. Their practice offers creative, in-process solutions to the potential quagmire in photography-as-contemporary-art's current color manifestations, and also to our dislocation from the pertinence that photography's history brings to bear on our current situation.... "

"These projects are key propositions for what photography carries forward into the 21st century, as a bid for us to remember that photography is an act of making choices. This includes choices regarding methods and style of vision, which need not be defined by the fashionable, marketable production values of an era. "

"It's still proving difficult for me to find the words on the tip of my tongue for describing what exactly I recognize in the work, say, of Osamu Kanemura, what it is that I sense to be a timely departure black-and-white photography's routing. ... Maybe it is the inherent formalism of the photographs that triggers my interest here - the very idea that a contemporary art photographer has so explicitly blended pragmatics and concept, deciding that monochrome is the only way to convey a specific vision. The work deftly circumvents the accusation of arch-Modernism by carrying the energy of enduring photographic discovery into new intellectual territory."

"The contemporary black-and-white photography I've described above has moved my thinking about the present state of photography onto a much more optimistic platform. Through these contemporary manifestations, the true, maverick character of photography, of our medium's history, is far from lost. Indeed, these threads of the past are given new and meaningful effect. I am not proposing that contemporary black-and-white photographic prints represent the full embodiment of the future for photographic practice, just that the degree of self-determination that I am sensing in these photographers' work is timely. .... From Tip of the Tongue - this project (2007) 0aim is to find the words that explain emergent issues for photography.

via personism