Bruce MacNeill

Bruce MacNeill makes fine black-and-white portraits with an 8x10 view camera. On rare occasions he posts a color photo; recently, for example, one of a couple in a bowling alley. Suddenly he posted two portraits of the same subject, one in black and white, one in color.

Quite a shocker, to me at least. Color transforms this. Taken with your other post today it constitutes an object lesson in what color can do. Now that most images are in color, B&W abstracts and schematizes an image. Something photographed in B&W is plainly not the thing itself – like it has a watermark reading “This is not real.” Color, and sharp color in particular, is a different story. That’s how and why I use it so much myself: it induces apophenia. Things we know aren’t real can seem so.

In this photo’s context, however, I much prefer B&W. Color’s fine for situations (the bowling photo, for instance), but here it removes the esthetic distance between subject and viewer that gives your portraits their special substance and monumental feel.