Luigi Ghirri
[Photographer, b. 1943, Scandiano, Italy, d. 1992, Reggio Emilia, Italy.]
I take photographs in color because the real world is in color, and because color film has been invented.
Sarah Moon (Marielle Hadengue)
[Model and photographer, b. 1941, Paris, France, lives in Paris.]
I believe that the essence of photography is black and white. Color is but a deviance.
Edward Weston
[Photographer, b. 1886, Highland Park, Illinois, d. 1958, Wildcat Hill, California.]
Any predictions that color will supplant black and white are ridiculous; drawings, dry points, etchings, lithographs are not negated by painting. The aesthetic possibilities of color will be determined by the creative ability of the individual.
(1947)
O. Winston Link
[Photographer, b. 1914, Brooklyn, New York, d. 2001, South Salem, New York.]
The locomotives are black. The coal is black. The tracks are black. The night is black. So what am I going to do with color?
Mary Ellen Mark
[Photographer, b. 1940, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, d. 2015, New York.]
The difficulty with color is to go beyond the fact that it’s color—to have it be not just a colorful picture but really be a picture about something. It’s difficult. So often color gets caught up in color, and it becomes merely decorative. Some photographers use [it] brilliantly to make visual statements combining color and content; otherwise it is empty.
Walker Evans
[Photographer, b. 1903, St. Louis, Missouri, d. 1975, New Haven, Connecticut.]
When the
point of a picture subject is precisely its vulgarity or its color-accident through man’s hand, not God’s, then only can color film be used validly.
(1969)
Daido Moriyama
[Photographer, b. 1938, Ikeda-cho, Osaka, Japan, lives in Tokyo.]
There isn’t much difference between photographing in color or black-and-white.
Robert Frank
[Photographer and filmmaker, b. 1924, Zürich, Switzerland, lives in Mabou, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada, and New York.]
Black and white are the colors of photography. To me they symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair to which mankind is forever subjected. Most of my photographs are of people; they are seen simply, as through the eyes of the man in the street. There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment. This kind of photography is realism. But realism is not enough—there has to be vision, and the two together can make a good photograph. It is difficult to describe this thin line where matter ends and mind begins.
