color versus b&w

I adore color and will always adore color but I've come to realize it can sometimes become a crutch. Color is descriptive, filling in details where there is structure. However it sometimes feels like it can reduce structure and distract from meaning within a frame if the intention for interpretation was there.

I've been curious of why legends such as HCB, Ansel Adams, Fan Ho, and Minor White have dedicated themselves to shooting mostly in black & white when color photography was available to them. After thinking about it a while and making some monochrome work of my own this is what stood out to me - black & white forces a layer of abstraction upon the viewer, while color may only suggest that layer of abstraction. As mentioned earlier, color is extremely descriptive and in some cases can make a photo too literal. It's easy to capture a memory or mood but much harder to capture an idea, which often comes from structure, lines, and form. Of course one can capture ideas in color but I think what they're getting at is that black & white is the unfiltered domain of ideas.

Color, monochrome - they all have their time and place. It's just a matter of what you want to convey through photography and understanding which tools are better depending on the intent.

I'll be shooting a lot more black & white this year and going through archives for photos that may possibly be revived in black and white. I don't want editing/post processing to be the end game, hopefully I can continue to evolve my eye through future shoots and take those lessons back to color photography.

I guess what makes this all complicated is that color has its own form of contrast not in brightness but in hue, potentially adding meaning and intent behind a frame. That's why I don't think I can ever discount color or think of it as inferior to black & white. They're two separate mediums that serve their own purpose. This is a journey I'm still figuring out and there's no doubt color will always have a place in my heart. The question is really what are our own intentions when we pick up the camera?