I’ve long had a fascination with the old black and white photographs of the past. Old cities, towns and street scenes showing how it once was with little in the way of traffic. Showing a different pace of life in most instances, old values, fashions and architectures. Knowing my interests a friend recently sent me some old black and white pictures he’d cut out of newspapers at some time.
Old black & white photograph (source unknown)
Not knowing if there is a copyright issue on this old newspaper clipping picture (I actually found lining an old drawer) – I’ll tentatively use it here purely to illustrate my impression and color ideas ( if the picture is still within verified Copyright I will of course withdraw the image).
As I said I find all old or vintage monochrome images intriguing. What were the colors and was the past just shades of black or gray?
The answer of course is no - there was color, indeed our whole world is in color but we are fooled into assuming that old black and white imagery is an association perhaps with the austerity of the times – black cars, black clothes, gray flannel trousers, gray smoke from the factories, dark skies and sea broken up only by the sea spray that may have washed across a promenade for example. Those popular pictures of the pier at Blackpool or Morecambe or any seaside town and with trams and little dark figures dressed apparently in black too if you believe the images.
I maybe look at these in a different light from most folks – what with failing eyesight I see the scene in my imagination and I try to sense the colors and movement and the life that those old images seem somehow to lack. I get an impression of what it should be like in my mind and yes it’s very much a personal interpretation and there may be colors in there that the viewer may not understand. Should that fact bother me? – well not a bit. I may use certain colors to express an emotion felt whilst painting the scene – the way the scene sets up can engender many emotions and these I put into the work often in texture but certainly as color.
Impressions of a Street end.
It’s stimulating to take a dormant old black and white photograph and bring it to life and to wonder that every picture is different. Each image for me speaks and shows new information, new impressions which often change as I work - and as I say – quite fascinating. Each picture dare I say – is as much a surprise to me as it is to any viewer. Its also nice if the viewer can realize and interpret just some of the impressions that I end up with.
Many of my friends say that my buildings so often have a myriad of color within them that they find fascinating. From say a granite wall or a sandstone facade – to me these are minerals and often the origins and structure of the stone will react differently in changing light – so I paint them in as a sort of montage of time – over a day perhaps – so a multicolor wall seems quite natural to me to me.
You’ll get the idea with the first impression above.
A much more powerful image than the original black & white with the added color and texture. Shadows change from dark browns to blue reflecting both the stone of the building and perhaps the difference in temperature.
The sunlit areas bright and white, hot in the rays of the low evening sun as it shines between the tall buildings and the marvelous and evocative cast-iron standing clock with it’s white translucent dial wonderfully back-lit and caught in the almost blinding shaft of sunlight.
The figures bright silhouetted cast high contrast and black co-tangential shadows give an added depth and proportion to the scene and to me adds more than just pictorial interest but perhaps social insight. Kids coming home from school perhaps or a mother and child? – the permutations are many and pure conjecture of course, but the scene for me is full of interest now, there are stories there – a dead end street maybe – but what stories it could tell.
Not bad from an old black & white newspaper image from a time past.
