Resistance
I am posting this photographic essay as a reminder for myself. I was asked to shoot in black and white for four days. I resisted.
When I began working in photography, I shot both color and black and white. The ability to see in black and white is from a practice eons ago. In the last 20-ish years I have exclusively photographed in color and I love it! I see in color and it is a dominant element in my imagery. Why would I want to give it up? I don’t particularly love black and white so why would I want to photograph using it as my palette? But if I am going to be honest, I need to go another layer deeper—what if I don’t remember how to see in black and white? What if my images are lackluster and don’t live up to the images I know I can create in color? I resisted trying from a position of stubbornness and fear.
However, before I began the four-day experiment began I told myself I was going to take risks. I want to push myself to expand the way I see. I knew that in order to grow, I had to try something different. Initially (day 1) when I began shooting in black and white, I told myself I would see if I could produce the same type of imagery I make in color but using a monochromatic palette. I tried. Some images worked and others did not. It didn’t take long for me to realize I wasn’t pushing myself to see differently. I had to resist making images in the same comfortable way. I pushed my current habits aside because the unknown was worth the possible reward.
My four-day exercise became an act of resistance in multiplicity: I resisted the long-ago past, the present, fear, comfort and the unfamiliar, my stubbornness and my openness. Resistance is not aimed at a singular idea or thought. It is often many layers that are not easy or quick to address. But for four days, I can do anything—and I did. Please enjoy the images made during my internal resistance. And if you are considering asking if I will become a black and white photographer, the answer is probably not but you never know…resist definition.
That realization hit me hard.
The moment you recognized you weren’t actually experimenting, you were trying to recreate your color work in black and white, the essay became about much more than photography. It became about the quiet ways we protect ourselves from uncertainty.
I think it takes real courage to write that so honestly. Thank you for sharing the process instead of only the results. I suspect a lot of us needed to read it.
Wow! I understand your resistance and would be very much the same for the same reasons. And I would also add my own, which would be a fear that I couldn’t pull it off. And I’d be right. But you have, absolutely you have. And if it feels like you’re stripping away your beloved colour, you are actually not; you’re inserting yourself into another layer of b&w. These images are truly beautiful - especially, for me, the first one, but all of them are. I think they’re remarkable and yet still absolutely you! ☺️