What is black and white?
Ribs (Photo: Simon Meeds, 2022) What is black and white? On the face of it, this question is a simple one. Let's be clear I'm not about to argue the fine line between "black and white" and "monochrome". Strictly an image is "black and white" when there is no colour in an image: everything is black, white or shades of grey, whereas in a "monochrome" image the blacks and greys can be replaced by tones of any single colour: blue, brown, etc. But it's common to include all monochrome images when we talk about black and white. I'm asking when is an image black and white or monochrome? Black and white film When I started in photography, and for the first 25 years or so of my photographic "career", at least 99% of black and white images were created by starting with a film with a monochrome emulsion, what we would call "black and white film". So when you set out for a photographic session with such a film you knew you...