9 The Graphic Element in Black and White Photography
Black and white photography restricts the image to black, white, and gray tones. You can even eliminate gray tones in a black and white image to create a strong composition. Reduction is a very important design element—not just in photography, but in modern art as well. Many painters (such as Piet Mondrian) gradually moved from a complex composition to simple shapes, to the point of almost reducing the picture to a monochromatic surface.
However, black and white photography is about something else: An image without color emphasizes the graphic form. In black and white photography, pictorial content is based on a more or less graphic, abstract image structure. Photojournalism can also strongly ...
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