The Beauty of Black and White

photo for seminar 2016

This photograph is called the “Eiffel tower 100th Anniversary,” by Elliott Erwitt. The beauty of this picture is in it’s contrasts; the black and the white, the background and forefront, and the simplicity as well as the complexity. The photographer of this piece said that, “…the special thing about photography is what you see, not what you conjure up. That’s quite foreign to photography in my view.” The images of the silhouettes, use light in a way that makes the subject darker, yet at the same time seems to be the main focus of the picture. The movements of more obvious things, like the man jumping, and the less obvious things, like the umbrella of the couple flying backwards, create a more realistic and almost tangible sense of what is happening in the photograph. One can practically feel what it is like to be there at that moment.

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