Black and White Photos

Time to revive my blog. Well why not, in near future this will be one of my few closest links with friends. More on that later.

Today I want to say something about the black and white photos. I was looking at some old family pictures and some of them were black & white. Unfortunately none of them had me in it (blame my DOB). But there were my parents and my relatives. And although I liked the coloured photographs quite a bit the B&W attracted my attention time and again. And I realised thats probably because the B&W pics are special in several ways. Just like our own memory storage system they have the ability to preserve the most essential and let go the rest. They leave something to imagination and they boast proudly of being from a different era.

Whereas a coloured picture brings out even the minutest detail and you might get embroiled in the blues and the yellows, a B&W keeps it simple, well just as its name suggests - Black or White, letting you stare continuously at the faces of people. Thats the other thing (and may be its just my family) but I found very few pics, of buidings or landscapes, which did not have people in them. Could be because cameras were new sensation and in India in those times landscapes were not so rare or fast disappearing and buildings were not so many and fast rising, that more film was spent on capturing people than inanimate objects.

And when you look at them now after so many years they have also begin to fade away. Taking away from us even the last few tinges of memories that remain. But whatever remains is powerful enough to rejuvenate in us the memories of old times and to allow us the luxury of imagination in choosing to colour those pics the way we like.

Same for the B&W movies I guess. Would we not forever after watching Awaara or It's a wonderful Life be busy colouring the characters. Imagining what they would look like in Eastman colour or (whatever is there now) allows us to relish the experience again and again. But do we want them to be coloured ? No, not me. That will be like depriving me of my clay that I use to create and re-create new objects.

Little wonder I choose to switch my camera into B&W mode as often as I can (you cannot always, specially if you are clicking a person and he/she wants all the colourful glory to be captured). Dont know whether this will be able to create the same affect 30 years later but we will see....