A black & white world

How you ever wondered what the world would look like in monotones? Complete and utter lack of colors. Would it be more sad and prone to depressive beings? Or with the lack of colors comes a better focus on the subject, on ideas, on the purpose itself, ontologically speaking?

We can quantify this in photography. Colors are just photons reflecting from the surface of the objects the light hits to our beautifully crafted retinae. Usually, when you want to get rid of expletives details, unwanted colors, you just turn to black & white, snap a finger and that's it, you call it a good photograph. But is it?

Is color a nuisance in photography and rob the photograph itself from a greater purpose? As you may very well know, the beginnings of photography were, indeed, full black and white. Maybe the black and white is just a prejudice in photography. Just by using it for so long in the past became a standard, but only because we were lacking means to capture the photons in colors.

Some years ago I was heavily against black and white photography. I called it "cheating". I called it manipulation of the viewer. Because the scene itself, the story, the drama, is altered in a mischievous way. I am still paying tribute to that, maybe superficial, way of judging.

Or am I? Below are some photos taken by me in the last year or so. Unrelated with one another. Unscripted. The only thing they have in common is they are all in black and white. Some of them, and some of you, might have seen them in color. Is converting them in BW a way of cheating the viewer and influence his judgement upon the photo? Is black and white the drama queen of photography?