It's something I'm not even sure is that helpful, or even that meaningful, but it was something that I mainly enjoyed. So I'd like to do it again, even if it's just short and brief and every now and then.
Today I'm wondering about black and white photos. Namely, how we connect with them. I always find it particularly interesting to see manually colored versions of b&w or sepia pictures.
for instance: http://petapixel.com/2012/01/17/famous-black-and-white-photos-with-color-breathed-into-them/
How transformative! The b&w pics are so obviously of another time and I think just having that knowledge gives them an air of history--a significance, a weight. Obviously those are pictures of famous people who are plenty weighty historically already but even if he subjects were ordinary people, the subconscious association with "Past" subtly flavors how we perceive the photo, I think.
Once they're colored, they become a lot more mundane. B&w is a pretty forgiving photo medium. It smoothes out imperfections of color but at the same time it gently blurs away life. Aside from the knowledge that b&w photos are old and thus weighty, that distancing from color and life also makes them weightier. Meaningful. Like statues of ideals of people rather than real people.
Color makes the people ordinary, makes them beings who breathed and ate and pooped and got back pains and lost things and drooled in their sleep.
Sometimes that's hard enough to remember about living people today.
The End
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