Color Images

The Camera Arts

COLOR IMAGES

The wider use of color film after 1935 added another dimension to photography. Color can give a stronger sense of reality: the photo looks much like the way we actually see the scene with our eyes.  Moreover, the use of color affects the viewer’s perception, triggering memory, reinforcing visual details, and stirring emotions. Photographers can manipulate color and its effects either before or after the picture is taken.

Even though there is no figure present in Grand Canyon, 1973, we observe the landscape through the eyes of the photographer. Joel Meyerowitz makes use of raking light and two sets of complementary colors; orange and blue, yellow and violet giving stark contrast and vibrancy to the photograph. The foreground, bathed in warm light, has details and patterns created by the scrub brush dotting the hill. A bright yellow spike plant rises up out of the desert like a beacon, an exclamation point on a vast, barren landscape. The cool blues and purples in the background soften the plateaus and hills as they disappear on the horizon. Only after looking for a few moments do we realize the landscape is rolling below us and we, the viewer, find ourselves soaring above.

 

Joel Meyerowitz, Grand Canyon, 1973

 

In another example, first we see the peaceful sleeping figure, then our eyes take in the finely meshed screen covered with flies in the foreground. The screen dilutes and blurs a warm monochromatic color scheme in Irving Penn’s, Summer Sleep (1949). A distortion in the center of the photo takes on a blue hue, visually hovering like a mist over the sleeping figure in the background. The image seems informal in how it is set up, however Penn’s photo is actually a meticulously arranged composition. And the narrative is just as meticulously crafted: serene, gauzy sleep, while trouble waits just beyond.

 

Irving Penn, Summer Sleep, New York, 1949

 

The addition of color, whether bold or subtle, brings another layer of complexity and meaning to photography. Imagine what each of the above photos would look like in black and white? How would your interpretation about them differ?