About Black and white

In a recent interview I made with Steve McCurry about his legendary last roll of Kodachrome, I asked Steve about his assessment about color image versus black and white and Steve replied, “….. Our world is colored so I took the image as they are….. *April 2011 issue of Chinese Photography

Indeed, photography as a media of art came very late in human history, in 1822 by Frenchman Joseph Nicéphore Niépce.  Due to technical and media development limitations, image could only be produced in black and white.  Whereas artworks predated early day photography were mostly in color, from the wall painting in the caves, Egyptian painting, the whole history of fine art paintings – except the Chinese water-ink painting which is the real fine art dedicated to black and white. But Western art has always been colorful. So sometimes it is confusing because modern day digital photographers, not all but quite many, vowed to go back to the true fine art while true fine art were in color before photography made them in black and white.

Anyway, this is not a post of saying which is better, certainly not to say which is wrong.  I think it just does not matter.