• Karl Auerbach@sfba.social
    1·
    22 days ago

    @[email protected] I agree that black and white can show us things that are in front of our eyes but we do not see.

    Lange’s famous photo of a dust-bowl refugee woman and her children would have been transformed from a pained, desperate person into an entirely different thing, a Madonna, had it been in color.

    I’ve gone into the Alabama Hills (near Lone Pine, California) where a large number of black and white films were made. I go to the various locations, get my eyes to see things from the camera’s angles, and I’m distracted by the colors.

    Imagine things like the opening scene of Woody Allen’s film Manhattan done in color? No way.

    The other night I re-watched the 1949 short film “Pacific 231” - the film’s power would have been reduced had it been in color.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw-DukkgAmk

    • Matt Blaze@federate.socialOP
      1·
      22 days ago

      @[email protected] I’ve seen a carefully hand colorized version of Lange’s Migrant Mother and it’s amazing. It does the opposite of what I’d expect - it makes her accessible and immediate, and I saw her as more soft and vulnerable than in Lange’s original, which made her look hardened by her circumstances.