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I am sure I'm not alone in beginning to think that the more complex, messy, unfashionable, and broad territory of black-and-white photography is where we are going to find some of the grist to the mill in photography's substantive and longer-term positioning within art. Established, darkroom-trial-and-error-loving photographers are stockpiling their preferred papers and film, and younger practitioners are beginning the experimentation of finding digital alternatives, replete with all the inherent irony of converting chromatic digital to monochrome. In and of itself, this kind of contradictory momentum will create important discourse, while also continuing to link the various value systems for photography (including amateur and professional practice) with artists' critique. Outside of the most financially and technologically privileged families and high schools, analog black-and-white photography is still a key access route into seeing and thinking photographically. While we had the hiatus in the early 2000s for the "give the (poor) kids disposable (analog) cameras" projects, black-and-white photography still looks like the most cost-effective method for an inspirational teacher to make visual literacy a necessary part of a child's expression and education. The techno-friendly, leisure time-rich amateur photographer successfully crafts the ever-nostalgic, formally perfected, black-and-white masterwork, by digital means. Epson and other manufacturers are on the verge of effectively (if not sentimentally) replacing Ilford and other favored gelatin-silver papers by offering highly technical alternatives that have a rich black-and-white tonality and even mimic the surfaces of gelatin-silver papers. We have also seen the refreshed relevance of monochrome digital fashion and lifestyle photography, something that had been a big commercial no-no in the 1990s. Perhaps the pungent and effective double act of sex and violence that had been slickly conveyed by the heavily retouched fashion imagery of the late 1990s was more dangerous, unpalatable and un-commissionable in post-9/11 austerity. The classic, neo-conservative production values of recent studio-based monochrome might actually be another point where black-and-white's reprieve from potential cultural extinction seems to be felt. It's here in this mix of agendas and uses of black-and-white photography that I think we have the ingredients for cognizant, challenging photography.
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