THROUGH THE LENS: The Artistry of Black & White Roots Music Photography

As with virtually all photographers of a certain age, I grew up with a Kodak Brownie camera and black-and-white film. College was, for many of us, the first opportunity to have access to a darkroom. Due to both the cost and complexity of the equipment needed to process and print color film, the darkroom was outfitted for B&W only. We quickly learned that the instructors, who were a generation or two older than us, were well steeped in B&W photography from not just practical consideration but also from an artistic perspective. While we learned the technical aspects of photography we also developed, if were were lucky, the ability to “look” at a subject, be it a person, a landscape, or inanimate objects, and the use of the most most important aspect of all the visual arts, light.

With our instructors’ guidance and reviewing the work of such masters as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Julia Margaret Cameron, Ansel Adams, and Dorothea Lange, we came to grasp that B&W photography can be far more expressionistic and three-dimensional than color. It’s an oversimplification, perhaps, but a color photograph permits you to see the surface of a subject, while a B&W photo can enable you to experience the subject’s spirit, to peer into the soul. 

I asked the ND photographers what attracts them to B&W photography, and their responses can best be summed up in what Jim Brock told me: “As digital photography evolved, more creative tools emerged to enable B&W digital files to emulate film photos. Grain could be added, luminance adjusted to recover detail in shadows, the look of specific film stocks could even be mimicked. For me, the starkness and nuance of shooting performers in B&W is akin to the difference between experiencing acoustic and amplified music — there is no room to hide or embellish. The ability to convert a color image to B&W is also a huge advantage when shooting in poorly lit venues with highly saturated reds and blues, conditions often encountered in smaller clubs to mid-sized rooms.” 

With this in mind, the photos in the gallery below amply demonstrate the ND photographers’ ability to go deeper into a performers’ art, thus creating their own.

Click on any photo below to view the gallery as a full-size slideshow.