An artists journey

Category: Black & White

  • The Magic of Silhouettes

    The Magic of Silhouettes

    We’re all familiar with silhouettes. Do you ever think about why they are interesting? I believe there is a kind of magic of silhouettes.

    What silhouettes are

    “A silhouette is the image of a person, animal, object or scene represented as a solid shape of a single colour, usually black, with its edges matching the outline of the subject. The interior of a silhouette is featureless, and the silhouette is usually presented on a light background, usually white, or none at all.”

    You are familiar with them. You see them often. A featureless black form in a picture. Have you ever thought how something that shows no detail can be interesting?

    We know from experience that they happen when a foreground object has a bright light behind it. A simple explanation and they are easy to generate, but that by itself does not explain their impact.

    On mountain top looking toward setting sun. Reflecting on life?©Ed Schlotzhauer

    Origin

    I love history and finding out how things came to be. I assumed silhouettes have been an artistic technique for centuries. Not exactly. It mainly dates from the 18th century. Cutting portraits out of black paper became a popular and inexpensive art form. It was especially popular for miniatures, small images on lockets and things like that.

    You can argue the technique was used by Greeks and others as far back as 7 to 8 centuries BC on some of their pottery. Perhaps it is possible to include some even older cave art. But as far as I could find, there was no name given to it back then and the technique seems to have fallen mostly out of practice until the 18th century.

    Here is a piece of nerd interest that will be of absolutely no use to you, but is an intriguing part of our history. The word “silhouette” is not an artistic or technical term. In 1759 Étienne de Silhouette was the French Finance Minister during the Seven Years War. The country’s finances were hard pressed and he had to institute a lot of unpopular austerity measures. So much so that people began to use the term “silhouette” to refer to things done cheaply.

    This was the same time period (18th century) when paper cutouts were becoming popular for portraits and the name transferred and stuck. Silhouettes were an inexpensive art form. It fascinates me that no one remembers Étienne de Silhouette, but we use his name all the time without realizing it.

    Looking through clock, Musee Orsay©Ed Schlotzhauer

    Why are they interesting

    But that still leave open the question of why they are interesting. Just being black does not make it interesting. Being featureless would seem to make them less interesting, not more. Why do they catch our interest?

    They are somewhat different from what we normally see, but that should not in itself be enough to make them special. There are a lot of “gimmick” techniques that photographers and other artists use to try to catch our interest. Generally these fads do not have staying power and fade out as quickly as they appear.

    I believe there is something fundamentally important and intriguing about silhouettes that catches our attention and has lasting power. There seems to be something about them that captures the essence of a subject.

    Less is more

    Less really is more sometimes. This is particularly true in photography, where our super megapixel sensors capture lots of information and detail. We can confuse our viewers with too much detail. I generally love lots of detail, but the subjective experience we want to present is more important than technical details.

    A silhouette is an exercise in simplicity. We remove all information about a subject except its outer form. The way our marvelous brain works, this is usually sufficient for us to recognize the object.

    But even though we recognize it, it is presented in a completely different form. With no interior detail we only have its outline. We are left to guess what is in the big, black, featureless area in the middle of it.

    And we do. We fill in the blanks. Based on our experience, we “know” what is in that shape. But still, the mystery remains and we perceive it different. We see it in a new way.

    It is an exercise in simplicity and minimalization. Absolutely nothing except the information about its shape.

    Similar to black & white

    In some respects silhouettes are related to black & white photographs. They often are presented in black & white. I believe there is a reason for this beyond just the big black area.

    The beauty of black & white is that it removes all color from the image. Color is the most powerful visual sense. We tend to see it first. It can overpower everything else.

    But when the color is removed, we more fully perceive the shapes and tonal relationships that are there. The image is transformed into a different art form, giving us an altered way to see it.

    Silhouettes are like that, but with an emphasis on just the shape of the isolated black forms. The shapes become the subject of the image. There is generally no tonal range in the silhouetted object, just form.

    So, although silhouettes are often made as black & white images, that is not required. It is often preferable to leave the color information in the rest of the image to emphasize the difference of the silhouetted objects and to draw more attention to them.

    Silhouetted tree against glass skyscraper©Ed Schlotzhauer

    The featured image

    The image featured at the top of this article illustrates some of these points. This was taken in a field on a tiny, nameless back road in northeast Oklahoma. I doubt if I could find it again.

    I chose to make both the foreground and mid ground black. Everything that is black is featureless black silhouettes. But there is no problem at all knowing what they are. Adding interior detail would not have improved the image. I could argue that it would have weakened it. It is the exterior shapes we see.

    And this is a case where I felt that preserving the color of the background helps set the context and emphasize the shapes of the foreground. I believe the color adds to the mood.

  • Thinking Black & White

    Thinking Black & White

    It seems to me I have been seeing and thinking in black & white more lately. Not seeing the world as black & white. Things are not that simple and clear cut. No, seeing the world as black and white images. That is the interpretation of reality I am leaning more to these days.

    Contribution of photography

    I believe black and white is one of the great contributions of photography to the art world. Yes, at the time it was a technical limitation rather than an artistic choice. The processes and chemistry of the late 19th century through mid 20th century could only create monochrome images.

    But the look stuck. It became associated with photography, with “reality” in image making. It helped establish photography as a distinct art form from painting.

    Because that is the medium they had, the practitioners of it became extremely proficient at creating beautiful, artistic images. A good artist learns how to use his tools. Some people say their achievements of the old masters of black & white photography have never been equaled. I’m not so sure. We can do a pretty good job today.

    Not obsolete

    Most people view black & white images as obsolete today. Why do that when we have a wonderful world of color imaging? Why throw away all that rich color information?

    The reality is that black & white is still a unique and vibrant art form. It can create very captivating images. Well done and well printed I believe we can still rival the best of the “old masters” like Ansel Adams.

    There are magazines that only showcase black & white. There are galleries that only accept black & white works. Some artists only do black and white. Why? Because many art lovers look to it as a wonderful medium for conveying emotion and feeling. It is still quite popular.

    Advantage of black & white

    But why? What advantage does black & white have? These days, since we have an equal choice between black & white and color, there must be a reason to chose black & white at times.

    Black & white is an abstract medium. Eliminating color brings a new and different view of the world. Without color the image becomes shades of tone and forms. It creates a whole new way of looking at things. It is clear that it is not just a representation of reality, it is an interpretation, a new view. The photographer could have worked in full color. So black & white was a conscious choice to show something different.

    Being so different, it is immediately set apart as something to be looked at in a new way. That helps with the reinterpretation of the scene. Plus, many viewers appreciate the pure tonal variations without the distraction of color. It becomes a new type of art.

    So creating black & white prints is no longer a technical limitation of the medium, it is an artistic choice. We use it because it can better express our view of the scene.

    Why now?

    As I said, it is an artistic choice. Some subjects seem to work better in black & white. There is a lot to be said for removing color distractions and focusing attention on tonal variations. Shapes and form and relationships take on a new prominence. It is a different interpretation of a scene.

    And the technology now shifts the work from the darkroom – in the dark and where you are breathing all sorts of chemicals – to the computer – in the light, maybe with a glass of wine nearby. Sounds more pleasant and creative to me. The masters, like Ansel Adams needed to make a number of test prints to work out the “map” of the dodging and burning and sharpening and spotting required to create the final print they like. Then they, or more likely their assistant, would spend many hours in the darkroom hand creating each print. Each print required hours of work.

    Now technology lets us push the time consuming work up front. I may spend hours on the computer working with an image to get it exactly the way I want. Then in a matter of minutes I can print it. If my systems are set up correctly, the print is a very good match of what I created on the computer. And I can push the button again and produce perfect duplicates every few minutes. The computer and printer technology completely changes the game. No more colored filters on black & white film, no more long sessions in the darkroom in possibly harmful chemicals, no more having each print be a performance piece that may of may not match the artist’s template.

    Technology-wise, this is the best time in history to be creating black & white prints. Artistically it is a great time, too. The world is saturated with color prints and black & white seems fresh and unique – a different point of view. It is time for a resurgence of black & white. At least for me.