Think for a moment. If I asked you what are the greatest photographs you've ever seen, would you name color pictures or black-and-white ones? Almost every great picture you remember probably was black-and-white: Ansel Adam's incredible landscapes, Weston's nudes, Churchill scowling at portraitist Yousef Karsh, Rosenthal's flag raising at Iwo Jima, W. Eugene Smith's picture of death in a Spanish village or his Minimata pictures, almost the entire body of Cartier-Bresson's work might be among them. Can you name for me the great color shots?
Steve McCurry's iconic Afghan refugee girl?
Posted by: Fazal Majid | May 16, 2007 at 12:11 PM
I second McCurry's photo.
It hangs, signed, in my living room. When it first graced the cover of National Geographic 20+ years ago, it moved me to give up on my "safe" career choice (engineering) and decide to be a photojournalist. I have never looked back.
Now I am "experienced" (cough, old, cough) enough to be influencing young photographers. It is a debt to people like McCurry (and Adams, and Cartier-Bresson) that makes me very happy to pass along what I have learned via the web.
Can you imagine if HC-B were 35 years old today, shooting (as he preferred) in anonymity, but also blogging daily to a new generation of photographers?
Or if Adams was 26 today, posting photos like "Moonrise" to Flickr?
Back to the B&W vs color icon thought, could it be that much of the great color photography has not yet had enough time to become "classical music" yet?
We know Mozart was great. Give me a hundred years and I will get back to you on The Beatles.
Ditto Bruce Weaver's shuttle explosion, the firemen raising the flag at Ground Zero and many other recent, color photographs.
Posted by: David Hobby | May 19, 2007 at 01:44 AM
Two that come to mind right off the bat are
"Earthrise" shot by the Apollo 8 astronauts and the shot of the firefighters raising the flag over the ruins of the World Trade Center.
It's a lot more practical for newspapers to print in color than it used to be and of course the web is a great color medium, so we will see more iconic color images as time goes on.
Posted by: Henry Heerschap | May 24, 2007 at 05:24 PM
STICK AROUND 'H.K." "THAY KNOW NOT WHAT YOU SAY", IF YOU ARE NOT HERE
TO WRITE & SAY IT!
WHEN WILL WE BE ABLE TO READ THE BOOK?:
"PHOTOGRAPHY...The past 60-plus years"
by: Herbert Keppler.
Posted by: Robert J Johnson | May 25, 2007 at 02:02 PM
I do remember one great color photo back then. I was working for 20th Century Fox the year 1963 Lou Vega was my boss then, But on his wall above his desk was a signed picture of MM in the nude on red velvet what a wonderful color picture it was.
Posted by: Richard | June 08, 2007 at 11:03 AM