White Portfolio
A few weeks ago, I put up the WHITE PORTFOLIO on my website. This the third black and white still life portfolio I have posted over the last year, and while it has certain similarities with the two other portfolios, in other ways the constraints of working with white in gray scale assert themselves almost immediately. Of the three background tonal ranges covered in these portfolios, I find white the most daunting, as it usually feels really clinical to my eye, and it reminds me of so many science books and magazine images I have seen over the years. At least for me, white lacks the textural, almost tactile, variation associated with the GRAY PORTFOLIO, and the mystery associated with items glowing or emerging from the dark in the BLACK PORTFOLIO.
When we see images from all three groups next to each other, a few things become clear pretty quickly; both the grey and black groups tend to have more interior detail in the objects than the white group, in the gray group the backgrounds commonly contain far more texture than in the other two groups, and in the white group, the contrast levels, use of shape lacking interior detail, and the emphasis on line drive the group as a whole. While I never gave it any thought whatsoever, some friends and colleagues have said much of the white group feels like negative photograms where the roles of black and white in the photos have been flipped. That was never a goal for this portfolio, though the visual outcomes in some of the photos may have unconsciously derived from both contemporary and historical photograms.
Much of what drove the creative decisions in the White Portfolio are derived from the two types of images seen above; the cluster of dingbats on the right, and Harry Callahan's unique weed photos in snow. Specific to the dingbats, a graphic design tool based upon two dimensional simplified symbols of common objects and cultural signifiers, the issue was one of wanting to work with geometries and shapes lacking any, or much interior detail, along with the use of common symbols against pure white. This look so reminds me of the Kodalith photos of my youth, where the complete image was composed of only pure blacks, and pure whites, and there were no grays whatsoever.
As far as the Callahan weed photos' influence, it is the dominance of line, and contrast decisions over all other creative decisions, but also on a practical level an aesthetic that allows for a studio look, even on location. If one of the primary goals in the Gray Portfolio was to come up with a visual language for shooting still life on location and the studio simultaneously that emphasized texture/pattern, one of the primary goals in the White Portfolio has been coming up with a methodology for shooting on location that yields studio like images. Key to this has been the use of a new white tee shirt, or a piece of white silk on location as my background. This has really allowed me to seamlessly create a look, independent of location or studio, that allows for objects to be completely divorced from any visual context whatsoever.
As far as the elevated contrast in these photos, when working on white surfaces in black and white, I have always thought of middle/dark grays, and black, as visual antidotes to the visual intensity and emptiness of pure white. We can see that idea operating in the red zinger teabag photos above. In the black and white version, the varied grays in the teabag draw the viewers attention. In the color version, contrast, and gray scale can carry a little less weight because the varied saturated reds can drive the photo in opposition to the white background. When color is removed from an image like this, the visual options available to you become far more limited than you might ever imagine.
