I've a couple of framed offset prints from George Georgiou's impressive 'Americans Parade' book of black and white photographs published in 2019. (Panos website write up here.) It got a fair bit of attention at the time the book was released but I don't remember anyone pondering why they are not in colour. Even raising this now from a distance feels a bit cheeky. When I ordered the prints (such incredible value!) I didn't have the audacity to ask, although it did cross my mind. Much as it also had crossed my mind to write to Lewis Baltz back in the early 80's (I was told he lived in Sausalito, California so if I had put his name and town on an envelope and I reckon it would have got to him), and after starting by letting him know he was 'the bestest' I could have popped the question (no, not that question). There is no doubt just asking the question, whether it be of Baltz or Georgiou it would undoubtedly be taken as a criticism, questioning their judgment. (It would me.) It's basically no different from saying, 'they'd have been better if you'd only shot in colour'.
Baltz shot black and white right at the cusp when colour was just about to become the new norm for art photographers. In fact his fellow 'New Topographics' co-exhibitor at the now mythic Rochester show in 1975-6 was already shooting 10x8 colour, Stephen Shore.
I have wondered over the years if George Georgiou did actually shoot in colour, digitally, and just desaturated them afterwards, but had kept his options open at the time of making.
To save any further bother over this whole conundrum I've just gone ahead and done the obvious, and with the power of free online AI, summoned up a colour version, just to see what the diff would be. It's given me food for thought.
Firstly, looking at this example, it's still a powerful photograph. Secondly, while it looks serious art photography in black and white in colour it does teeter into anyone could have taken that territory. The colours could probably benefit from some better grading.
The black and white approach does have one particular downside in my view, it discards something of that banal patina of the contemporary world preferring to reside instead in the medium's heroic tradition. I have thought on more than one occasion that this book is one of the last great iconic projects of the 1960-70s, at time when photographers like Winogrand, Friedlander, Arbus - and Baltz - were pre-eminent in the business of pointing cameras at things and black and white was still where it was at.
